Gardening Fun for Volunteers
It’s been a busy month for volunteering as we have had the pleasure of hosting 5 different groups of volunteers from local branches of Centrica and Virgin Media O2. Many charities are over run with offers of help that they can never utilize fully due to the organization required. This often includes a suitable date, suitable tasks, risk assessments and someone to help support the groups while volunteering. This can lead to them just saying No to groups because it is too much for them to do. Happily, Age Concern Windsor has some time put aside to help utilize the amazing volunteer resources from company’s. This month are garden has had a mini make over and we are looking forward to the seeds planted, maturing into flowering plants later in the year.
Groups have worked on laying a new paved path to our compost bin, sunk into the ground to enable us to mow over the area. It looks really great and will mean we can utilize the compost bins more. The area has clay soil so during the bad weather this area is sodden, slippy and you just don’t to walk on it. Now we have a path. The group also turned our Compost bin and created a second to contain the enormous amount of composting material that we get from the trees, bushes, garden space and vegetable peelings. This has given us a large amount of compost to put on our garden and that we can use with our Clients.
I love gardening and there is something quite special about seeing the garden flower from early Spring to later Winter with something different every month. Sadly, we are a long way from achieving that, but this month we have been working on getting some flower beds put into the front of the property, planting some bulbs (yes I now it’s early but we couldn’t wait), to bring a little more colour and wild life to the area.
We have also had a great weeding session from a second group who clear a large area under the trees where grass just does not grow. It’s too dark and dry and as the clients complain about it being too hot in the sun we are looking to turn this area into a raised patio where they will be nicely shaded. After weeding this area was then partially covered with paving stones and we hope later in the year we will be able to improve this further to enable our clients to use this area.
Due to the area we have also paved outside our gate to enable us to leave our bins outside the garden space but off the paths. It is such a small thing but we were forever forgetting to put the bins out and who wants to sit right next to a bin when you’re in the garden. We certainly didn’t.
All in all it has been a fantastic month of volunteer groups who have been so enthusiastic and have made a significant difference to our little garden space.
