While we stayed busy during lock down it’s been great to open the forest garden gates again and welcome back some of our volunteers.
Of course there’s had to be a few workday changes. The sessions are shorter, we are working and eating in smaller groups and only our designated cooks can make lunch – and wash up!
We are also back at Brighton Aldridge Community Academy and Moulsecoomb Primary. At Moulsecoomb we have a couple of hours with Year 4 with instructions that we can only work outside, which of course suits what we do perfectly. The children weaved a willow structure, moved compost, scoffed apples and raspberries and hunted for slow-worms and other bugs in their stunning school grounds. On Thursday morning Daisy helped maintain the flower beds on Queens Road using plants grown by Dave from the Bevy’s Friday Friends. Dave has been key in distributing the veg we’ve been growing at the garden to local older residents. We are also running a 10 week Connecting in Nature course with Brighton MIND and the South Downs National Park.
However we are limiting numbers to our workdays. We know that services and activities for adults with disabilities are few and far between, so we have decided, along with our work with school pupils, that this is where we need to focus our support.
This means we cannot accept any more people at the moment unless it is a referral from a support service. We understand this is disappointing, but we are a small charity with limited resources and although we are working outside we need to make sure that the garden is a safe place for everyone as many of our volunteers have underlying health issues.
We hope this will change in the near future and we can once again open our gate to everyone. We will of course let you all know when this happens.
* If you would like to support our work financially why not become a friend of the forest garden with a monthly donation https://moulsecoombforestgarden.org/donate/
