The Kitchen Garden project at Anglesey Abbey
The Red2Greenhouse project also offers learning activities and work experience to children from the local secondary school who are facing risk of exclusion from school and risk of involvement in crime. We are delighted that the National Trust has recently made available to Red2Greenhouse the old (and decrepit!) kitchen garden at Anglesey Abbey for Red2Greenhouse to restore and rebuild from scratch. They broke the ground at the new two acre site before Christmas with great excitement and are passionately planning beds, fruit trees and hedging. They will grow fruit, vegetables and plants some of which the National Trust will buy from us to sell in their shop and restaurant and some of which the young people will market and sell to the public.
Over the next three years, 90 young people will develop the kitchen garden and in doing so will develop new skills, qualifications and a new belief in themselves.
The calm atmosphere combined with hard physical work outdoors in a supportive, trusting and fun environment, where the needs of the individual are at the heart of the project, and the opportunity to gain qualifications and develop new skills, all make for a situation in which the young people will positively thrive.
In the exciting new kitchen garden setting, the young people will plan the layout of the land to recreate the garden as it was in the 1920s. They will create beds, dig the soil, build accessible pathways, plant trees, fruit and vegetables, compost waste, gather, wash, market and sell produce. While doing this they will be encouraged to developed a greater understanding of themselves and their behaviour, they will practice strategies which will improve their life at school, they will take horticulture and other qualifications and towards the end of their time with us, they will be supported to spread their wings and try work, volunteering and further education.
|
