Our Year in Numbers 2023
249 Volunteers. Our amazing volunteers gave their time, effort, skills and expertise to help our charity through project work and events (+57 volunteers from previous year).
2,652 Volunteer Hours. We recorded a record number of volunteers hours this year, helping individuals improve their wellbeing, learn new skills, meet new people and give back (+595 hours from the previous year).
13 Corporate Supporters. Thirteen companies engaged their staff in our Green Team Events and corporate volunteering days as part of their CSR commitments, ESG strategy and volunteering schemes. We give thanks to: London Speaker Bureau, Low Carbon, Munich Re, Cadent Gas, Waterstons & Navigator Terminals, The Eden Hotel Collection, National Grid, Coca Cola Europacific Partners, NFU Mutual, Arden University, Cemex UK and BP Pulse.
2,023 Trees Planted. We planted a fantastic number of trees this year as part of our ‘Plant Trees Plant Hope’ campaign in a bid to build biodiversity, combat climate change and create greener spaces in our local community.
16,000 square metres of wildflower meadow seeded. We seeded a large area of the ‘Field of Life’ within the nature reserve with a wildflower seed mix and it will now become a wildflower meadow to add colour and beauty as well as the nectar-rich plants helping to support dwindling populations of native pollinators.
1 Hospital Garden Created. We created Heathcote Garden at Royal Leamington Spa Rehabilitation Hospital to accompany the Restaurant Garden we completed there last year. The garden has provided somewhere enclosed and secluded, for NHS staff to meet, enjoy and relax in the outdoors to boost their wellbeing.
The green space included a pollinator friendly garden area to improve the biodiversity of the area, living walls to add mini vertical gardens of colour and vibrancy, raised alpine beds full of beautiful low maintenance plants and a range of spaced out seating areas in both full sun and in the shade.
4 Community Programmes. We ran 4 community programmes within Warwickshire to help improve mental health and wellbeing, boost biodiversity and enhance employability:
Gardening Club at Mary Ann Evans Hospice - We ran a ‘Gardening Club’ at Mary Ann Evans Hospice in Nuneaton to help plant and maintain the gardens, provide a support group for those in the local community to improve wellbeing and create new habitats to boost biodiversity and support more wildlife.
The Gardening Club project was running every third Tuesday throughout the year to support local people who have experienced bereavement. The horticultural therapy sessions have so far included the creation of miniature gardens, bulb planting, sowing seeds, growing veg, watering, weeding and making living walls.
Prince’s Trust Project in Nuneaton - A community project with Prince’s Trust volunteers helped to create 10 new square planter frames for Mary Ann Evans hospice to support our decorative alpine beds. The project also engaged the wider community with the involvement of volunteers at IAR (Inspiring Addiction Recovery) and another successful partnership programme with Bam Construct UK. It’s was great to facilitate a project that brought so many people together to socialise, develop new skills and create such a positive impact at the hospice.
Meon Vale community allotment project - Earlier in the summer we created a vegetable plot at Meon Vale Allotment with families and members of the local community to give them the opportunity to grow their own veg just a stone’s throw away from their homes.
The project engaged people of all ages where friendships were formed, healthy meals were cooked, sustainable practices were learned and wellbeing was boosted. 12 families in total took ownership of a bed each and we provided them with the seeds to sow to start their veg growing journey. It was a rewarding and successful project with many people growing veg for the first time and so many children taking an interest in growing veg and gardening.
Green Therapy in Stratford-upon-Avon - We delivered 250 hours of Green Therapy during our twice weekly sessions in Stratford-upon-Avon. The horticultural therapy group consists of individuals from the local community who were inactive or long term unemployed, experiencing social isolation and struggling with learning difficulties and/or poor mental health.
Sessions were based both at Stratford hospital and The Hideaway. At Stratford hospital we helped maintain the gardens of wellbeing and grew veg in the Kitchen Garden to donate to the on-site café. At the Hideaway we helped enhance the progress at the nature reserve to boost the biodiversity of the area. The group enjoyed meeting others, being outdoors in nature and doing such positive community work that made a different.
500 kg of fruit picked and donated as part of our Harvest Share project. This project got volunteers together in the great outdoors to have fun and pick a variety of fruits from local gardens and orchards. The fruit was donated to care homes in the local community to prevent food from going to waste and any surplus or damaged fruit was juiced by our Green Therapy group and shared amongst hospital visitors.
250kg of vegetables grown and donated. During the summer we grew our own veg at Stratford hospital Kitchen Garden where we harvested and donated our crops to the on-site café to make use of and supplied our Green Therapy group with fresh produce to take home to cook with, learn healthy recipes and learn about more about sustainability.
1 community and corporate meeting space refurbished. A major achievement and investment this year has been at The Hideaway with the refurbishment of The Picket Post building as we transformed it into an off grid meeting and therapy space for both community and corporate use.
Great steps forward were made to insulate the building and install a new ceiling, paint and decorate, lay a new laminate floor, fully furnish the main room and kitchen area and have running water at the sink in the utility room.
Having this space to accompany the compost toilet and our exciting new BBQ hut has progressed the facilities on site brilliantly to create our events venue.
5 funders. Our incredibly generously funders helped us to achieve what we did this year to create such positive change.
We give thanks to National Lottery Community Fund, Heart of England Community Foundation, Warwickshire County Council Green Shoots Fund, Save our Wild Isles Community Fund and Community Mental Health Transformation Programme - Innovation Fund.
Thank you to everybody who supported us in 2023, we really appreciate it. Here’s to a healthy and successful year in 2024.
Follow our journey on our social media channels.