Ray Harrington-Vail Reports:Â One of the Isle of Wights most popular beaches now as another attractive feature nearby.Â
Thanks to the efforts of the Freshwater Bay Residents Association, the Footprint Trust and the Isle of Wight Council  a sea-spay and drought tolerant shrubbery has been created adjacent to the Albion public house.Â
Those visiting the area can now enjoy a Martinii not the drink but rather a Euphorbia. Other exotic plants include a strange variety of names including, Robin Whitebreast, Golden Sword and Pink Panther.
This scheme is part of the Footprint Trust’s Waterworks project supported by the AONB Sustainable Development Fund and EU Leader+.  It links to the IW Council’s One Million Blooms initiative, which seeks to create drought-friendly planting in parks and open spaces. Other beds have been created by the Footprint Trust at Dinosaur Isle, Sandown Station, Yarmouth Gateway and at Melton House in Ryde.
The drought tolerant gardening scheme that was an initial idea from the Footprint Trust due to concerns about Climate Change, which has caused a dramatic transformation in weather patterns, leading to record breaking heat waves and droughts across Europe.Â
“The planted areas will lead to a reduction in traditional maintenance costs, as they will require no artificial watering and the plants will last for many years…â€.
“We need to move away from disposable annual plants, imported from other lands, which require vast amounts of water in many cases…â€
“FBRA is an active local community group which actually gets things done, we are delighted to work with this organisation and hope to work with them on other projects in the future. We would urge local people to join them and to donate money so that they can achieve even more…â€
The scheme has been spearheaded by Tim Nicholson and Jane Woolley-Dod of the FBRA Improvement Project, who would like to extend their thanks to Nick Webb of the IW Council and Ray Harrington-Vail for their invaluable and unfailing support.Â
“We were also lucky,†says Tim Nicholson, “….to have been awarded a grant by ‘Awards For All’ to cover the cost of the landscaping work carried out by Brighstone Landscaping.  It has taken 18 months to get this part of the Project off the ground and we are all delighted with the result.â€Â
Isle of Wight Community News provided to Island Pulse By Footprint Trust Ray Harrington-Vail.