Garden Project - Making use of what we have got

25th June 2020

Garden Project - Making use of what we have got

Service users spoke to staff about the vegetable waste they get each week asking what could we do to make use of this.

As there is very limited space in one of our Maidstone Services, we have small back gardens and just a large car park out the back with small borders. We all spoke together and decided to recycle the vegetable peelings and any other waste we could by making a compost heap. We had to try and source things cheaply and luckily, the industrial units opposite us gave us a few pallets, with the help of staff and a service user who put his skills to work this was made into a large box which we started to empty all our compostable stuff into this we positioned this at the far corner of the car park that was very stony . From this idea everyone realised the potential of growing things, potato peelings had started to sprout and raised a lot of interest in growing our own Potatoes, the only thing that would cause a problem was we had no space. A service user and his support worker came up with the idea that we could fill tyres with compost and plant potatoes in these, it would take very little room and we could stack on top of one another rather than having the backbreaking digging of the ground to plant them, we manged to source some tyres from a staff member who was having to get new tyres she asked to keep these and then just down the road at the garage we manged to get some more old ones to use, obviously the compost would not be ready yet so we had to buy some and due to lockdown this was hard to source but everyone chipped in to buy this.

w service users were becoming more and more interested in growing their own produce we only had small gaps between the fence and the car park but we was all determined to have lots of things growing that we could have the satisfaction of growing and eating. Donations were greatly received from staff members from tools to seeds and plants. We were on a mission.

We now have several things growing in our little gaps and pots: Coriander, Parsley, Mint, Potatoes, carrots, peas, beans cabbage, Kale, radishes, onions, tomatoes and even strawberries we also have, Marigolds, nasturtiums, sun flowers and a beautiful lily.

Everyone worked so hard together from digging to planting. It has given everyone who took part satisfaction of home growing and daily maintenance, everyone feels they have a garden that can be nurtured. Everyone has done a fantastic job and will be trying our vegetables freshly picked straight to the plate.

Who would believe all this could be grown from some neglected borders around a car park.

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