Following a grant awarded late last year from the 3rd Sector Intermediate Care Fund, ‘The Young People Bridging Initiative’ has helped both Luke and Alyn gain skills and keep busy helping us maintain our 2 walled gardens and wild-life areas.
Alyn (with Damon, Phil and Emma) are ready to plant hedgerow, parkland and wildlife bare-rooted shrubs and trees, from ‘I Dig Trees’ (ovoenergy.com/i-dig-trees). Alyn says he has never planted a tree before and is looking forward to seeing them all grow.
Here you can see Luke, who joined us in January. Luke comes very Tuesday, and works very hard indeed. He especially likes the heavier work, and seems never to get tired. This practical work helps Luke with his College Studies too.
9 students from Coleg Cambria are also benefiting from this grant, and here you can see some of the students weeding a border ready for planting flowers. It is hoped that some of these young people can volunteer at the gardens in the future.
On a sadder note, we were very disappointed to hear on Friday 24th March, that we were unsuccessful in our application to the ‘Create Your Space’ initiative.
A tremendous amount of hard work had gone into writing this bid; however, the developmental grant enabled us to carry out extensive public consultations – helping raise awareness of EVWG; we obtained professional advice on our developmental plans, and commissioned a video about the development of the gardens, which will be shown at presentations this year.
5 presentations have been carried out so far this year (To the Friends of Wrexham Museum; to the Wrexham Civic Society; to Oswestry Rotary Club; to Yale Rotary Club; and to the Ruabon Field Club). Emma has accompanied Ann to 3 of these talks, and helps promote our work here, and sell some of her cushions and our confetti and plants too!.
The next Talk is on Wednesday 5th April to Llay Gardening Society. It starts at 7.30pm and is at the Miner’s Welfare, Llay.
