.jpg)
As we welcome the new year with excitement for our plans to open The Gardeners' House, our minds have also turned to planning our sensory garden and getting ready for planting once the winter is over.
The Sensory Garden has been designed by Helen Rosevear of the Sensory Trust, working collaboratively with The Gardeners' House and local groups including Pengarth Day Centre. The design features plants carefully selected to create a garden that is not only beautiful to look at but appeals to all the senses too.
Mark Holman, our horticultural lead, has been sourcing these plants from a number of nurseries and they are now ready to be delivered to us. When the plants arrive Mark needs space - and protection from the weather - to keep them until he can set them all in place.
Our plan is to erect a polytunnel on a small plot of land just outside Penzance that Mark has found for us - but it will need to be cleared first! Our team are planning to make a start on this job soon - and we may be putting out a call for volunteers to assist us.
We will use the polytunnel to support some of the activities at the Gardeners' House, such as off-site storage of plants that have been propagated but are not yet ready to be planted out, storage for seasonal planters that will be brought back to the Gardeners' House when the plants are in bloom and as a location for some of the fieldwork involved in workshops and activities we will run once we are open.
The Sensory Garden - made possible by generous funding from the Tanner Phoenix Trust through the Cornwall Community Fund - will be created in the area between The Gardeners’ House and Pengarth Day Centre.
We will be developing a range of activities to bring our heritage and local stories alive, creating a tranquil safe space where people can connect with nature - reaching children right through to elders with particular focus on benefits for dementia patients and users of the Pengarth Day Centre.
We will have more to share soon on the progress of our sensory garden, our design plans and our vision for how this will be used by our community.
