Holme Lane Community Garden
The Holme Lane Community Garden is a relatively new project in the area. Two local people identified a scruffy piece of waste ground by the side of a main road, overgrown and covered with litter and dead wood. They decided that it wasn’t good enough and began to clean up. Over 3 months they litter picked, cleared weeds and cut back dead trees. As the site was in full view of the highway, people stopped and asked what they were doing and could they join in? Soon the two-woman initiative grew into a sizable group of volunteers. Now with the approval of Sheffield Council and financial donations, they are proceeding to the next stage of the plan. The volunteers want to create a visible garden with space for food, flowers and fauna. Formal beds of planting are set in the wild grasses and bark path whilst a corner is left to nature to create a wildlife corner of nettle, bramble and butterfly bush. This will be one of the few open green spaces in a built up suburban area and the ever changing development is generating a lot of local enthusiasm with additional volunteers joining in all the time. Local schools have been in contact wanting to use the garden as an outdoor classroom and immediate neighbours are taking ownership by keeping on top of litter and watering duties. The work on this green space is all about neighbours working together to improve their area.
Dykes Lane Green
Spurred on by green action taking place in the Hillsborough Centre, the Dial House Neighbourhood Watch Group and local residents wanted to join in and tackle their local green space, a fenced off piece of land within their local area.
Working alongside Sheffield City Council staff and local church group volunteers the site was overhauled with a litter pick and clean up and the group then planted 1000 spring bulbs to complement a newly planted specimen Gingko tree.
The local people wish to continue to maintain this green space and the fence has now been repaired to protect the flowers. Future plans include searching for funding to replace the chain link fence with a more aesthetically pleasing substitute.
Wisewood Community Sports Centre and School
The word on the green agenda spread across the area and was picked up by Maggie Birt (Community Manager) who formed a team of people to tackle both a raised bed on the perimeter of the site and a quadrangle which had gone to seed within the school plus litter pick a rubbish hot spot and create the ground for a woodland path.
The team of local people including school children from Wisewood worked very hard litter picking 30 bags of accumulated rubbish. They cleared the beds of weeds ready for replanting and repaired and renewed the school quadrangle ready for summer. All this activity was self initiated and without the knowledge that Hillsborough was entering the Bloom awards. This is testimony that the community is getting on message and wanting to care about their environment.
Hillsborough College
Demand for Horticulture is on the increase and this is an area of expansion within the College. The work produced by students is of a high quality and is seen widely in the grounds of the College where students can develop their skills in a real environment. Students also do field work within their communities in partnership with Hillsborough Park.
The College has a number of landscaping schemes throughout the grounds Rather than remain in the classroom, learning everything in theory, the students have been able to design landscape and maintain their own patch of land. In this way, all the elements of the curriculum have been put into practice.