A garden project which aims to help vulnerable and isolated people has launched.
The Wild Haven at Community Roots in Queen Anne’s Road, Southtown was unveiled last weekend.
The Green Light Trust received a Big Lottery Reaching Communities Award Grant for over £300,000 enabling the organisation to launch the scheme.
Over the next four years, the trust aims to reach 250 isolated and disadvantaged people living in the Great Yarmouth area.
The project aims to improve their physical and mental health, skills and qualifications.
Team Leader for Project Wild Haven, Steve Eastley, will be running sessions with assistant leader Frances West, working in partnership with Great Yarmouth and Waveney Mind to offer sessions for young people, and lonely or isolated people alongside other local residents.
They run workshops and structured sessions in gardening, green woodworking, environmental conservation and wood craft.
A green woodworking area will transform materials from the wildlife area into useful products, which will then be sold along with plants grown as part of a new social enterprise.
Participants will learn about horticulture by cultivating the community gardens, a vegetable growing area, allotments and the orchard.
There will be a variety of workshops organised throughout the year where people can try their hand at traditional skills such as building an outdoor oven or willow-weaving.
These would be open to the groups who attend the sessions but also offered out to the wider community.
In the Ted Ellis Conservation Area, a variety of native willow has been planted.
The signage for the project was unveiled by Mark Pendlington, the chairman of the Norfolk and Suffolk Local Enterprise Partnership and a patron of the Green Light Trust which brings people and nature together.
Mr Eastley said: “Although we get referrals from Great Yarmouth and Waveney Mind the project is open to anyone in Yarmouth. The community can find out how they can get involved from visiting our website or checking our new display board and signage at Community Roots on Queen Anne’s Road, off Suffolk Road in Southtown.”
For more information visit www.projectwildhaven.com.
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