Willow Park is an attractive area of parkland situated on Needlers End Lane with a children’s play area and plenty of space for picnics, games, walking and rambling. It has many mature trees and is well worth a visit.
Since 2017 the Council has invested to improve the park and make it more attractive to visitors. Local residents continue to give their help both with working on plans for the future, and direct small scale projects. Residents helped with clearing some of the overgrown areas of the park and planted many hundreds of bulbs since 2018. Solihull Council provided the bulbs and a lot of the heavy ground clearance work was done by the Warwickshire Conservation Volunteers. We are particularly grateful for their contribution.
2019 saw the planting of trees and hedging plants, provided free from the Woodland Trust, the Arden Free Tree Scheme and 5 native Black Poplars from the Queens Canopy scheme. Again, Warwickshire Conservation Volunteers and Friends of Willow Park have done all the planting work.
The Friends of Willow Park group has been created by residents to specifically act as a focus for people using the park and to access grants for park improvements.
Balsall Parish Council agreed at its meeting on 13 April 2022 (item 10b) to use the top grass area in Willow Park for a community orchard. For the first phase of the orchard the council applied for fruit trees from the Arden Free Tree schemes and were successful in obtaining a Victoria Plum, Conference Pear and 3 Bramley Apple trees.
In addition, Rosebourne Garden Centre (now Hilliers) donated 2 eating apple trees - Christmas Pippin and Egremont Russet - and a resident donated 3 trees grown from seed - Beck Braeburns. We hope that over time our residents will pick and eat the fruit in the autumn when it is ripe. For further information see our news page.
