Spring has sprung … hopefully!

March 03, 2025

Suddenly over the last week the greenhouse has sprung to life! Longer days and the sun finally coming out has made the world of difference and our seedlings are most definitely appreciating it.

Spring bulbs are making an appearance providing welcome pops of colour around the garden and offering more opportunities for delivering sessions outdoors. We have a wonderful range of raised beds of differing heights which makes gardening accessible for all.  However, access to ground level beds is limited in the therapeutic garden areas for those patients who need to work at a lower level. We have started to create some ground level “no dig” beds to remedy this and create additional planting space. It was a useful way of teaching this process to a patient who was keen to learn about ways of gardening in the UK climate and who may look at allotment growing in the future as a way of continuing this interest.

We’ve done a couple of sessions using Kokedama – a Japanese technique using a moss ball wrapped around plant roots (in this case we used Snowdrops) and it is a creative way to display spring flowers. This could be done with outdoor or indoor plants making it a good activity to do throughout different seasons. It’s a lovely activity to lift mood and is also a great way to work on manual dexterity as well as producing beautiful designs that can be hung in groups to great effect.

We delivered our first staff health and well being session on seed sowing and growing and have an interesting programme to come throughout the year. These sessions are a great way to bring people together and give them time to focus on themselves for a little while as well as allowing them to experience the activities we use with patients.

We were also pleased to welcome Tanya Bearup, the vice president of Therapeutic Horticulture Australia, for a visit.

Looking forward to longer days, warm weather and lots of lovely growth.

Potting up

03/03/2025

Seedlings and Harmony Compost

03/03/2025

Sweet peas

03/03/2025

Kokodema with Snowdrops

03/03/2025

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