Projects
Over the years I have been involved with many outdoor projects, most of which promote well being and encourage communities to embrace nature.
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Five Rivers Health and
Well-being Centre Community Garden
This is a community pollinator friendly garden, planted at the main entrance of our city leisure centre. It's a project for those who like the traditional herbaceous perennials and developing year round interest, with my usual organic, pollinator friendly ethos. Volunteers tend the space for the enjoyment of it, at the weekly meet up. There are thousands of visitors to the centre every week and lots of them tell us what a joy it is to come past the planted spaces when they arrive for their morning swim.
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I hope this can be a pilot project for many other local authority sports centres, I believe it will bring the exercise offer of each organisation into the outdoors to complete the picture of healthy lifestyle opportunities! Funded by the Wiltshire Area Board and built during the Covid pandemic of 2020. To get involved with the volunteering team, get in touch. Location using What3Words App: clocks.stays.yoga
Update 2023: Donations are being sought, to develop a small growing area for the Meadows Day Centre service users, next door and to buy bulbs for Autumn planting. Click Here to see how you could get involved.
St Clements Church Yard Secret Garden Community Project
This is a non-traditional, wild churchyard community project, launched 2015. This unique historical city space, engages a team of volunteers to slowly record its history while carefully tending it, for the benefit of the myriad of wildlife residents. It's a community garden, but not as you know it! Wild, rambling, full of charm, St Clements truly is a sanctuary to all who visit but there are no flower beds or veg beds, just headstones, trees and wild plants.
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Originally set up by myself as a C.I.C and self funded through fundraiser open days, part funded by Area Board grants and an array of locally given donations. This project is currently closed to the public but to get involved with the volunteering team, get in touch.
Location using What3Words App: reject.influences.sentences or find it on Google Maps
Arundells House Community Garden Project
A traditionally designed community garden, located in the grounds of the residents of former Prime Minister, Sir Edward Heath. Set within Salisbury Cathedral close, this stunning house and garden now reaches out into the local community and offers a chance to engage within a beautiful walled space. With sustainability as one of the project goals, I was honoured to get involved.
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This is Arundells House first foray into community outreach, after forming a charitable foundation. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, I started this project in 2022 when I was asked to lead on all aspects from design, roadmap and implementation. This project has been executed with the kind assistance of the Alabare charity and their 'Boots on the Ground' ex veterans volunteer group.
The Salisbury Bee Trail
This was my flagship engagement project while I was just setting up St Clements. This award winning Bee Trail, which has additional AR technology and can be used alongside an App. It is installed around Salisbury parks and other spaces, for anyone to learn about pollinators in a deeper way. More info on how to do the trail, links for downloading the FREE App, where to get paper maps and so on, here.
I was able to come along to look at the marvellous work that the 'Friends of Harnham Slope' group had done, to clear some areas of the slope to enable light to get in and wildflowers to grow. I spent some time assessing the site and advising where bee habitat may be encouraged or created.
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I also helped with an interpretation board for visitors to understand the ongoing work and all its ambitions for pollinators. Please click here if you would like to get involved.
I worked on a new Bee Trail point for this wonderful city development. This time I collaborated with an artist who was making some interesting waymarkers for the site. The project was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and steered by the Land Trust, Natural England and other stakeholders.
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I also helped with an interpretation board for visitors to understand the ongoing work and all its ambitions for pollinators.
Castle Hill Country Park and the Salisbury Bee Trail
Harnham Slope Project
This is a community garden I got involved with both behind the scenes at the conceptual stage and then again on the big 'plantathon' day to launch it within the community. This brand new project consists of a series of raised beds, in the heart of a new housing development just outside of the city.
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This was an interesting project for me as I got to look at how a very open garden would bring a community together, in a very open public space, I am pleased to say that after the initial shuffling around of roles, people getting to know one another and so on, the project thrives!
Longhedge Community Garden
This project, was funded partly by the Heritage Lottery Fund as part of the wider Whitebridge Spinney project. First I created some outdoor bee safari workshops for children at St Andrews primary school, to learn about and understand some common bee species, in particular the common carder-bee.
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The children then produced some wonderful interpretive art work in a second workshop; which now appears inside the Bee Trail App. When you get to Whitebridge Spinney for this additional stop on the trail, you will be able to use the App to see the children's work. Please click here to learn more.
St Andrews School Bee Project
I was able to initiate and set up the very first swift walks in and around Salisbury as a way for one of our St Clements team, Daniel, to have a specific part to play in our outreach offer to the community. Daniel who has a love of all things avian, later took this idea and ran with it; using the BTO Swift project template to go solo with this project.
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At this point I helped with advice around volunteers and fundraising, and other practical 'setting up' help. The project now helps people put up Swift boxes around our city, giving new nesting opportunities for these wonderful enigmatic but frighteningly threatened birds and the talks that kick started it all; still remain a solid fundraising element of the project to this day.
Swift Project
Species Recovery Trust
I have trained with this very special local charity, in the many wonderful courses they run and this time it was my turn to give back. I am in the unique position to have various plots of land under my care and Dominic Price, the Species Recovery Trust founder and director, asked me if I would be able to plant and nurture some exceptionally rare plants in one of the more protected sites.
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This is a real privilege and I continue to nurture the plants while at KEW gardens; they carry on with some scientific study of how this plant may produce seed and germinate. Dominic "The meaningful changes we are seeing are from individuals, either making a big difference in their jobs in the environment sector, or simple volunteering, spending a few days a year clearing bramble from around a rare species, counting butterflies on a transect, monitoring their local bat populations". Please click here to learn more about the Species Recovery Trust.
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