Empowering people to improve their green spaces, enhance their environment, and boost wellbeing.
The Phoenix Garden Blooms joined: idverde Community Investment Fund 3 years ago
The Garden is about to reopen after the construction of our new community building. We want to re-landscape and refurbish the garden for our new visitors!
The garden gets over 400 visitors every lunchtime during the summer. We also provide a valuable habitat for a number of species, such as frogs and stag beetles, not found elsewhere in Soho or Covent Garden. We want to accommodate both more effectively in the future. We want to remove rubble to build new spaces for visitors to sit in and for training, volunteering and social events to held. We want to create new habitat areas to encourage different species. We also want to build new seats, rebuild walls for raised beds and reinstate accessible paving, so as many people as possible can enjoy the gardens. Part of this programme is to facilitate and train local volunteers to execute most of the works. The garden has a great track record in delivering volunteer sessions - but after being closed for a year, we need to invest in new tools and recruitment to reinvigorate our workgroups.
What we'll deliver:
Why it's a great idea:
Our garden is located in a very diverse part of London. Over 47% of local residents were born outside the UK. We also welcome many local workers and tourists from all around the world. Our project will benefits huge numbers of visits and give them a great impression of this part of London. It will also make it easier for people to access the garden. Our project will bring local people together and give them the chance to learn new skills and meet new people and their neighbours. It will create habitats that encourage greater bio-diversity in the city.
Steps to get it done:
The development of the new landscaping in front of the Phoenix building will further our financial sustainability by maximising available garden space at fundraising events.
Journey
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Empowering people to improve their green spaces, enhance their environment, and boost wellbeing.
Click on the pink tape measure to see the report!
Hello and greetings to all our funders, We wanted to give you all a big update on our progress with our landscaping work that we so very successfully crowdfunded for last August – and which you all contributed towards. Winter is usually a fairly predictable and relatively quiet time for us at the Phoenix Garden. On any normal year, with visitor numbers low, our community gardener busies himself with the many small tasks necessary to get us to Spring looking fresh and inviting to people emerging blinking from hibernation over the dark winter. However it has been a different story this year with all the work we are doing on the landscaping to get us to the point where we can reopen the garden after nearly 18 months of closure for works. Anyone following us on social media will have seen the changes underway. Once our building construction completed in October, we were then able to shift focus towards the landscaping work that would not only connect it with the rest of the garden, but also give it a setting worthy of its unique and beautiful design. While we were doing the work we were somewhat aware of the task ahead of us, but in looking at the winter as a whole we realised that our gardener and volunteers made some truly herculean efforts getting us to Spring with so much progress made. In total our community gardener and volunteers were responsible for : 8tons rubble dug out + put through crusher 20tons topsoil spread 12tons green-waste compost spread + dug in 2tons manure dug in 4tons sand laid as path base 1ton grit laid as drainage under path 10tons crushed rubble dug in or used as mulch and 1ton of paving slabs carried about to make walls The scale of the project also enabled us to grow our volunteer program, as there was no shortage of work on any of our volunteer days, as the above list shows. We held a very well received corporate workday with local business Ingenious Media. Following on from all of this work preparing the ground around the garden for planting and landscaping, the final work of creating new beds and laying paths is now underway. Compared to the high volume, slow going work over Winter, we anticipate that this final phase of work will now be relatively quick, helped by the warmer weather and longer days, with a late Spring opening looking increasingly likely. Thanks once again to everyone for your support and patience, and we look forward to updating you with further progress, and with an opening date in late Spring. All the best from The Phoenix Garden Blooms.
How will the money be spent?Target (inc. fees) £18,929
Costs Breakdown
This shows how money raised for the project will be spent. These costs have been confirmed by the project's Delivery Manager and verified.
Target (inc. fees) £18,929
Our Volunteer List
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VolunteerThe Phoenix Garden is a community-led, open access community wildlife garden, providing outdoor activities and volunteering opportunities for local people in an area with little public green space and access to nature; the garden attracts 65000 visits per year, is run by volunteers and receives no local authority funding.
The Phoenix Garden is an environmental garden, situated in the heart of London’s West End and is unique in the area. The garden is managed to be of maximum benefit for urban wildlife, and provides a home for a wide range of species: frogs, 12 species of bee, a range of bird species. The nearest alternative site with provision of access to nature is over a mile away.
The garden is maintained using and showcases sustainable garden techniques; it is a low water use garden, all green waste is recycled onsite and no pesticides, artificial fertilisers or weedkillers are used. We showcase sustainable garden practice as part of our day-to-day work.
We run workshops and volunteer sessions to promote a wider awareness of sustainable choices and to encourage uptake of these techniques; compost workshops, Christmas tree recycling, re-purposing of discarded materials for habitat provision, propagation workshops and growing vegetables in pots and window boxes.
The Phoenix Garden works with a wide range of people with differing backgrounds and experiences. Many of our users and volunteers have experienced life-challenges and periods of isolation. Working as part of the garden community can make a real difference in the long-term with improved skills, reduced isolation and social exclusion.
Through the activities of the garden we provide informal skills training supporting the development of individuals to move forward to employment through the provision of transferable skills, volunteering has been shown to increase confidence and improve the employability of individuals. We have had a number of volunteers move on to regular employment or to education in the horticultural sector and elsewhere.
Project Owner: The Phoenix Garden The Project Owner takes legal responsibility for receiving and spending the funds raised and ensuring the project is delivered.
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