On Saturday (10th February) we held The Arlington Square Big Plant, this was our biggest plant of the year with more than 1600 plants being planted in the two northerly central beds, which were recently been dug out.

If you’ve heard the raucous cries of gulls around the southern corner of Arlington Square, you should know that a pair of lesser black-backed gulls have nested on the roof of No. 22 for the last few years.

In the last Arlingtonian, we showed you in pictures the back-breaking work our volunteer gard eners devoted to preparing the two flowerbeds at the south of the square.

Arlington Square’s four rectangular flower beds were laid out in the early 1950s, so it’s a safe bet that this was a Coronation project.

There’s a new open space in the flower bed on the northwest corner of Union Square.

We are pleased to announce we now have a Happy To Chat bench in Arlington Square. The idea came from Allison Owen-Jones in Cardiff, who noticed an elderly man sitting alone on a bench in a busy city centre park, ignored by passers-by.

The newly formed Friends of Union Square Gardens enjoyed their first volunteer gardening day in early March.

Our gardening plans for spring include planting plenty of snowdrops and mini daffodils in Arlington Square’s rejuvenated circular beds.

In the last Arlingtonian, we wondered who or what had been burying eggs in our gardens and plant pots.

Only a couple of months ago, the large circular flowerbeds in Arlington Square were a mess – not exactly circular, ragged round the edges and over-full of tired old plants and plenty of vigorous weeds.

You will have noticed that the AA’s stalwart volunteer gardeners have finally cleared the southeast corner of the perimeter border.

We’ve been receiving puzzling reports of strange egg sightings. Large eggs have been discovered, often half-buried, in gardens and tree pits.

In recent months the AA’s gardening volunteers have been mostly focusing on weeding and watering the flowerbeds in Arlington Square.

Our community gardening year started last month with a well-attended turn-out of volunteers to help plant, prune, mulch, garden, chat and eat chocolate biscuits.

It sometimes takes an effort of memory to realise just how much the Arlington Association volunteer gardeners have achieved in just over two years.

Our lead gardener Paul Thompson held a window box workshop in the community garden in May (right ), generously sharing his expert advice and offering us many useful tips on how best to plant and maintain a beautiful window box.

Those grim castellated entrances from the New North Road to St Paul Street, Rydon Street, Linton Street and Arlington Avenue are no more.

Our long-term project to renovate all the railings round Arlington Square has started well.

We have made great strides this summer and autumn improving the planting in Arlington Square, especially the perimeter borders.

The entrances from the New North Road to St Paul Street, Rydon Street, Linton Street and Arlington Avenue are to be transformed into “Pocket Parks”.