In this update I bring you news of the progress made in getting everybody back into the garden, introduce three new members of staff, an update on recent open days and plans for future events, and news of our fundraising.
I was delighted to receive the three photos below, taken by John Hughes last week. This level of activity in the garden is something that we have not seen for 15 months; it is testament to the dedication of staff and volunteers that the garden has been kept in such great shape and that we are now able to open the garden to our beneficiaries while working in a Covid safe environment. We are continuing to increase the number of beneficiaries coming back into the garden each week and we look forward to the time when we can get back up to full capacity.
John Hughes continues his series of drawings and his June offering is a Stag Beetle which was spotted in the garden in late June.
One adjustment we have had to make due to the pandemic, is to operate with much smaller group sizes and hence we have recruited new members of staff and deployed temporary buildings so that we can operate safely distanced while inside.
Introducing New Members of Staff
We are lucky to have a dedicated and very successful fundraiser in Ann Morton and through her efforts we were able to secure funding from a number of different sources to allow us to take on more staff as part of our Covid recovery plan. So far we have recruited three new members of staff and are currently interviewing for an additional person.
Our three new members are:
John has been a volunteer for many years and is well known to all at the garden, Tracey joins us from the NHS where she worked as an Occupational Therapist and Gareth has been working within the Wrexham care community and will be known to people in the garden through his care work. We are expecting to announce a further staff member this month so watch this space.
We are currently recruiting for a Charity Lead Officer and details of this role can be found on our vacancies page.
Open Days
Our recent open days in May and June have been very successful in raising much needed funds for the charity and importantly enabling us to reconnect with the community. Over 300 people attended the May event and a further 200 plus people attended June’s event, raising over £2,000 in total.
We are hoping to have another open day in July and details will be posted when a decision has been made, in the meantime we will be open in September as part of the National Garden Scheme; click here for details.
Fundraising
During the 2020/21 period when the garden was closed to beneficiaries we were able to run online classes and deliver our successful Keeping In Touch programme which included the purchase of IT equipment for beneficiaries and staff to be able to run the programme, all of which were made possible through the generosity of a number of funding organisations. Since reopening to beneficiaries we have taken on additional staff as part of our Covid recovery programme and again this has only been possible due to some fantastic funding from different organisations. We have received specific Covid related funding from:
We welcome all donations; you can help us by clicking here.
