Join us for our Spring Series of Garden Skills Workshops! Taking place within (and beside, indoors!) our Community Garden at TOSH, these afternoons a made up of both garden growing skills, and creative workshops, to feed us and nature.
Drop in for any or all of this series on Sundays 2pm-4pm, February through to April.
In Spring 2025, we are excited to welcome back our expert facilitators for more garden planning and growing wisdom.
Sunday 16th Feb - No Dig Gardening with Alan Kenny
What does that really mean – basic principles
The earth web – connectivity and fertility
How do I get started
Simple techniques
What can go wrong and how to avoid simple mistakes
Setting up a simple bed for growing - (practical)
Q & A
merged with Deep Dive into Soil – the living soil food web
Why we should never systematically till our soil
It’s not dirt … its alive ..well it should be !
Let’s have a look at the main players creatures, microbes and fungi - What are they doing?
A new economy, not greed and not charity
Microbe transplanting and growing – enriching your part of the planet (practical)
Building soil – creating the platform
Composts and teas – easy plant food
2nd March - Easy Fruit & Herbs with Alan Kenny
16th March - Wildlife Gardens and Wonderful Weeds with Alan Kenny
25th March - Intro to Garden Design with JvB Design (6pm-8pm evening workshop!)
13th April - Make your own Buggingham Palace or Bird Box with ‘Recycled Wood by Duff’
Tickets
Tickets are £5 per person donation. Donations help us to maintain the garden and to continue to offer these sessions. Under 5s do not need tickets. Free Community Tickets are available to support those who need it most (e.g those with low income, asylum seekers, refugees, vulnerable migrants). Please note that these are limited. If you do sign up for a Community Ticket and can no longer attend, please cancel or let us know, enabling someone else to join.
About The Orchard Garden
The Orchard Garden was built during the 2015 refurbishment of TOSH. For years the garden contained just four fruit trees, with spring bulbs and wildflowers growing up each Summer. The garden was plain and under-used, but had lots of potential.
With thanks to two years funding from the People’s Health Trust, with money raised through Health Lottery South West, in January 2023 we consulted with our community and commissioned a new garden design by a local Landscape Architect who works with communities.
Our garden theme is 'Food for Us, Food for Nature' and it is to be a sanctuary to work, rest, learn, grow and harvest in.
With the support of our volunteers, from our neighbourhood and our refugee community, we built the garden over 2023 to 2024. To ensure a low impact on nature we used recycled materials such as donated reclaimed bricks to build pathways and seating with minimal concrete.
Our community at The Old School House created terracotta tiles to decorate the seating circle, and the our Threads women's workshop sewed seat cushions and bunting for us. Local charity Faithworks and their workshop team created a beautiful seat arbour, and our second bench is made from recycled plastic. We planted 14 new fruit trees and climbers, wildflowers and bulbs, added espalier supports and arches and finished building and planting the garden in July 2024.
At our open day we were joined by over 100 people from our community to celebrate the hard work of our volunteers who together created our new orchard garden. Our community now use our garden daily for lunch and quiet time, chats and meeting breakouts or to work and think in the fresh air. Our neighbours come to run, play ,forage and explore nature.
Each Monday afternoon a volunteer team come together to share many different tasks to maintain the garden and enjoy a cup of tea together. If you wish to join our volunteer team please contact our Garden Coordinator melinda@recreatedorset.co.uk, or pop in on a Monday afternoon to see what we are up to.
This project has been made possible with funding from the People’s Health Trust using money raised by Health Lottery South West. We have also received donations from JPMorgan, Wessex Water and more.
