Brymbo Community Garden
We have a fantastic project underway at Brymbo Enterprise Centre building a Community Garden.
Brymbo Community Garden
Who are we?
Gardening and particularly gardening in a group can bring many wonderful benefits to all, regardless of health, age, or circumstance. We are just at the beginning stages of our little community garden based at The Enterprise Centre. Our group of keen volunteers alongside staff have established a planting area, alongside trees and benches. They have also constructed two large flower beds thanks to materials kindly donated by Reeds Construction (based at BTRT).
Maureen our head gardening volunteering has lots of ideas to grow our garden and would like help from anyone interested in getting involved....even if it's just an hour a week. You don't have to be an experienced gardener as we learn from one another or sometimes ask Google 🙂
If you would be interested in joining us then please pop along on a Tuesday morning to the
The Enterprise Centre car park (We are just on the right hand far corner) between 10am and 1pm for an informal chat or email tom.hughes@brymboheritage.co.uk
Here are some of the benefits of joining the Brymbo Community Garden below.
Better Physical Health
-
The exercise that gardening brings.
Gardening tasks can be chosen and tailored according to physical ability and available energy, from gentle seed sowing to vigorous digging. We can work for 5 minutes or 5 hours, and and our health can gently improve according to our personal circumstances and needs. Tasks can be tailored to help us to use or strengthen muscles which can improve mobility and flexibility where we need it. -
Fresh healthy fruit and vegetables.
To offer access to free fresh healthy food is one of our main aims. Poor diets due to low income or other circumstances can be drastically improved with the addition of healthy organic salads, fruit and vegetables, the vitamin content of food deteriorates with age, so to be able to eat food fresh the day it is picked keeps it at its optimum nutrition and flavour, something money can’t always buy!
Social Inclusion
-
Gardening in a group offers the opportunity to connect with others in a gentle non invasive way, gardening side by side at one’s own pace, enjoying tea breaks together and the continuity of belonging to a regular non judgemental group can help reducing feelings of isolation or exclusion.
Improved Wellbeing From Being Close To Nature
-
Reconnecting with nature in our modern society, brings huge benefits, often termed the ‘biophylia effect’
-
Stress levels can be reduced from an opportunity to be with plants and insects in a beautiful outdoor environment.
-
Sensory benefits, sounds, smells, touch, taste of a garden all have a profound impact on our sense of wellbeing.
-
Often people feel a profound sense of peace, and spiritual wellbeing within a garden or natural environment.
Better Mental Health
-
Gardening can give tangible results from relatively small amounts of effort. To see seeds grow that were planted a week or so before, to dig potatoes out of the ground, to stand back and look at an area that has just been weeded or cleared, to literally eat the fruit of one’s labour all can engender feelings of pride, purpose and achievement
-
Gardening in a group can also aid people to feel benefit from the groups achievement, to help avoid overwhelm as so much can be achieved together, to share tasks according to ability, to be able to pool resources and benefit from everyone’s skills, this can also help with positive feelings of self esteem and regained self respect.
New Skills
-
Gardening together, learning by doing, learning from each other, or being taught more formally can help people to acquire new skills or remember old ones, to develop confidence in themselves and improve the chances of finding employment.
-
In a community garden group, everyone has a chance to use and develop their skills, there are always so many opportunities, not just gardening but also making tea or cakes, organising the admin sides of things, making jams and chutneys, helping at fetes or talks, developing websites, learning to design, supporting each other and the group in so many ways. These skills can all be developed as a volunteer, then translated into other work applications or placements.
-
Formal volunteer training for eg Health and Safety, First Aid, Kitchen Hygiene, or CPD gardening courses etc can also be received in some community garden groups, which all help to improve chances of finding employment.