Sunday 18th May, 2pm-4pm: No Dig Gardening and Nature Friendly Growing, with Alan Kenny (Southbourne)

Join Alan at his allotment in Southbourne to learn all about the no dig method, and Alan's approach towards nature friendly growing!

Understand the main players in soil - creatures, microbes and fungi... what are they doing? Learn how to build soil to create the platform for growth, and how to use composts and teas for easy plant food!

Please note: this workshop will take place offsite, at Alan's allotment in Southbourne. The full address will be provided upon ticket purchase!

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Join us for our Summer Programme of Garden Skills Workshops! Taking place in and around our Community Garden at TOSH, these afternoons are 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, May through to August.

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Tickets:

Tickets are £7.50 per person.

This donation help us to maintain the garden and to continue to offer these sessions.

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.

Under 5s do not need tickets!

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This Summer, we are excited to welcome back our expert facilitators for more garden growing wisdom and creative nature projects...

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Summer Programme 2025:

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18th May (Offsite, in Southbourne) - No Dig Gardening and Nature Friendly Growing, with Alan Kenny

Join Alan at his allotment in Southbourne to learn all about the no dig method, and Alan's approach towards nature friendly growing!

Understand the main players in soil - creatures, microbes and fungi... what are they doing? Learn how to build soil to create the platform for growth, and how to use composts and teas for easy plant food!

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‍22nd June - Windowsill Growing & Mocaic Pot Making

Join artist Rosie Edwards and learn how to grow herbs and salad on your windowsill using seed propagation. We'll also be making our own mosaic decorated pots to plant them in!

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20th July - TOG Turns 1! Summer Garden Celebration (FREE)

Join us as we celebrate one whole year of The Orchard Garden, alongside our wonderful community who helped to create it!

Activities and further details tbc...

Entry to our annual garden celebration is free!

Donations are always welcome as we to continue to grow The Orchard Garden project.

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17th August - Plant Propagation and Hapazome Printing

Join Rosie to gain valuable root cutting / splitting skills to turn one plant into multiple smaller plants - create more plants for free! Explore the art of hapazome printing, a form of natural dyeing to create unique eco-prints using the colours and textures of leaves and flowers.

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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.‍

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.

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Every Monday afternoon, 1.30pm-3pm, TOSH provides free Nature Crafts & Gardening workshops for our diverse community in Boscombe. If you or anyone you know would benefit from this welcoming and inclusive space, please contact our Garden Coordinator melinda@recreatedorset.co.uk, or pop in on a Monday afternoon to see what we are up to.

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