8 / 14
8 |
P a g e
HOPE Community Allotment – Gardening Essentials: How to be a
good gardener
HOPE is a community allotment project, based in Sheffield, which aims to provide opportunities for
local people, especially people with physical disabilities, learning difficulties and mental health
problems, to make a positive difference to their general health and well-being by:
Providing support to individuals to learn basic
gardening skills so that they can grow their own
organic fruit and vegetables;
Sharing the harvest and using the produce to
improve individuals’ eating habits and diets;
Encouraging individuals to increase the amount of
regular exercise they take;
Providing opportunities for project users to take
part in collective fundraising to enable the project
to continue.
The group sent some of their volunteers on our ‘Gardening
Essentials: How to be a good gardener’ course in March
2014, to help them to develop their gardening skills. After the course the group were successful with
their grant application for £300 to purchase timber to build raised beds, and a spray irrigation kit. The
raised beds and the spray irrigation kit were to go in the groups new 20ft by 14ft polytunnel, which
they had recently purchased using some previous funding they had been awarded.
The raised beds will allow the group to grow greater quantities and a wider variety of vegetables under
cover with the water irrigation system watering the beds out of volunteer hours.
“We are ready to start growing vegetables, herbs and
flowers earlier this year and expect to grow a wider variety
of produce and to increase the amount we grow. The
automatic irrigation system will ensure that plants are
watered outside our normal watering hours. By having a
more efficient growing system we anticipate attracting
more service users and volunteers to join our community
allotment project”.
The group intend to continue to develop their project by: