Gardening at The Hub

📅 24 Jan 2025

The Bury Community Hub is home to Leading Lives and operates from Monday to Friday as a daycare centre for adults with special needs. In a previous life it was an Adult Training Centre run by Suffolk County Council and incorporated an industrial sized kitchen which provided meals for the attendees of the training centre and also “Meals on Wheels” for local people. This kitchen was supported by a market garden on the land at the rear of the main building.

Since Leading Lives took over the lease of the site the kitchen has been “mothballed” and the market garden area has been largely abandoned with only basic grounds maintenance carried out.

In 2023 The Shed agreed to work with Leading Lives in order to provide disability friendly facilities to help daycare clients to take part in horticultural activities. A joint application for Locality Budget funds was successful and £2000 was granted for the construction of Raised Beds. Two wheelchair accessible raised vegetable beds were constructed in early 2024 and were put to good use resulting in an amazing crop of tomatoes and marrows.

After construction of the two raised beds there was still a significant proportion of the budget left to be spent on other improvements. For The Shed this was seen as an opportunity to broaden our activities to include horticulture and to give shed members an opportunity to meet during the week and for Leading Lives it held the promise of bringing more of the garden area back into production.

The immediate plan is to create ground level timber edged beds in areas of the garden where crops had previously been grown and to employ the “No Dig” method to allow both able bodied and those less able to be involved in growing vegetables and flowers.

Longer term there is an opportunity for shed members to get more involved in bringing the garden and the orchard it contains under control and hopefully to benefit from the experience.

Editor's note: I can't post this without noting the epic amount of work by members Brian, Bob and Harry (and helper Matthew - not me!) to transform the garden so far. Onwards and upwards :)