Monday 3 April marks the starts of Community Garden Week - a special week that allows us to celebrate everything great about community gardens! We are lucky to have a Community Garden here at the Pioneering Care Centre (PCC) in Newton Aycliffe. The space is available for the public to visit during our opening hours, to ponder its selection of plants, allotments and more!
There are many benefits to gardening, from being out in the fresh air, coupled with physical exercise, which releases endorphins to the brain and reduces stress and boosts your mental wellbeing. It can also improve your overall body strength, as it can be a workout more than you think! It's not just beneficial for yourself, it is especially important for the environment, with gardening being a big factor in cleaning the air, protecting local wildlife, pollinators and mitigating global warming to name a few.
Planning for the future and staying green and eco friendly is an important goal, and we have recently began looking at this with the helping hand of our Community Garden Volunteer, Melvyn Rutter. Melvyn has over 25 years worth of experience in waste water treatment, and has continued over the years to help the environment and make everywhere he goes, a greener, cleaner and healthier place. Melvyn plans to use his knowledge and wriggly worms to solve potential pollution and waste problems in the Community Garden!
He said: "We plan to use the tiger worms to compost a mixture of grass cuttings and shredded waste paper. The concept being we turn waste products into stuff of value. After a few months, the resulting rich, high nutrient compost can be used to plant new plants throughout the garden.
"The principle being with the worms is we take what happens in the natural environment that surrounds us, and 'put it in a box', to solve problems of waste and pollution, in both natural environments and human environments, too. We can solve problems in the garden, and throughout the industrial world, all with a small bag of worms."
Anyone can have a wormery, where grass cuttings, shredded paper, banana skins, apple cores are composted by tiger worms. Making your garden a greener and more sustainable environment for you and the surrounding wildlife.
It's an effective way to keep your garden thriving throughout the year. A goal for everybody should be to be as green and sustainable as much as you can, even if it's little things - don't try and worm your way out of this one!
Fancy joining us as a Community Garden Volunteer? We welcome all ages and abilities, with no prior experience necessary. Contact the PCC for an informal chat to find out more. Contact enquiries@pcp.uk.net or call 01325 321234. For general information, visit our Community Garden page.