The Platform

Monday 12th December 2016

In September 2016, the Silverburn team finally completed installation works for our very own community garden. This garden has been it has been a long time coming, none of us anticipated how much work it would be but it has at last paid off!

The inspiration for this project originally came about through Silverburn’s work with a local primary school Cleeves Primary School and their onsite community garden project which is managed by 3Hills Community Garden.

The garden at Cleeves Primary School has a poly-tunnel onsite which the school children and members of the local community use to grow fruit and veg. However, this poly-tunnel has been subject to consistent vandalism including burning down of the entire structure.

There was also a Silverburn link to the school through Lorraine our Retail Business Manager. Lorraine’s little boy went to the nursery in Cleeves Primary and came home in floods of tears after the ‘bold boys’ set fire to the poly-tunnel at the school and destroyed all the seedlings the children had planted.

The Silverburn team have long wanted to help out the school and community garden who do amazing work in the local area. 3Hills approached Silverburn in the past to investigate installing a poly-tunnel at Silverburn as an extension of their community garden, which would be in more secure location. However, we have never had sufficient funding to complete the project in the past. It was the Hammerson product innovation team that came to the rescue!! They allowing the centre team to secure the necessary funds and guidance to complete the project.

After months of planning, meetings, applying for planning permission and then further meetings by the onsite team Alex, Jennifer, Louisa & Scarlett and Sally from product innovation we finally started construction works on the garden in early September 2016. It only took about 2 weeks for the whole garden to be installed, which included fencing, the poly-tunnel, raised beds, waterbutts, access ramp and signage. We invited the guys from 3Hills Community Garden, some children and teachers from Cleeves Primary as well as our staff to join us to cut the ribbon on the 28^th September.

The kids got stuck in with their trowels and garden rakes and planted cabbage, heather and flowers to get the garden started off. The rain held off just long enough for them to get 3 raised beds all planted. They even had time to give them a quick watering from the gardens rainwater harvesting vessels!

The very nature of a project like this is that it will constantly evolve and get better, we already planning on additional planting, raised beds, bird feeders, picnic area and colourful painting of the fence. We also want to open up the garden to other schools and community groups to grow fruit and veg, as well as our own Silveburn staff. 

From Jennifer, Environmental Coordinator for Silverburn 

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