Blooming Ellesmere Port Wards

Funded on
09 Dec 2021

Revitalising ward planters to make Ellesmere Port bloom again, encouraging local volunteers to look after them long term and providing the tools needed to do so.

£13,960 Raised of £13,919

33 Backers

100%

Costs

Clearing and replanting 27 planters for one season £8,046
Tools £5,048
Target: (inc. fees) £13,918

Ellesmere Port in Bloom are a constituted unregistered charity working with a growing number of small groups of people and groups in the area to make the borough greener and a better place to live and work. Made up of local people with support from the Council and various businesses we enter the RHS in Bloom competition and ultimately aim to receive the gold award. To get to this award we work with local groups to bring back into use disused and abandoned spaces, making our environment brighter, more colourful and with local people enjoying them and also helping to maintain them. We received a Silver award in 2019 and are awaiting the result of this years assessment. We have 12 plus groups under the umbrella of EPiB with three new groups/areas joining us this year and we hope to expand this for 2022. We have ambitious plans for the future including recruiting and involving local volunteers to not only maintain the planters but also to assist in adopting new spaces and helping new groups to achieve their aims. We also aim to provide support to the groups to enable them to raise the money they need to be able to do and run their projects, hoping to make them sustainable through fundraising, support from local businesses and possibly outside funders such as the Lottery. Our plans include holding plant sales, open days and 'Have a Go' days to not only raise funds to continue to plant the planters in the future but to recruit volunteers to the projects and build a network of volunteers to help keep Ellesmere Port Blooming. We are also setting up a Tool Library to lend the tools needed for the groups to be able to clear and plant new spaces, tools that they would only need to use for a short time but dont have access to normally. This will reduce their costs, solve storage space issues and bring them together under the EPiB umbrella. Gardening is good for our Mental Health and our project will bring groups of people together after what has been for many a bad period in our lives. It will also improve peoples isolation issues, give them a chance to make new friends and give people pride in the area and what they have achieved. Then at some stage we will achieve our 'dream' of being awarded gold in the RHS competition but in the meantime we will achieve a brighter, colouful and tidy place to live and work with a community that helps to achieve this result.

Project Owner: Ellesmere Port in Bloom The Project Owner takes legal responsibility for receiving and spending the funds raised and ensuring the project is delivered.