The Therapy Garden began life in 1998 on the 32-acre Manor Fruit Farm site in Normandy, Surrey, when the founder acquired a derelict, one-acre parcel of land from Normandy Parish Council. The site was occupied in 2001 and two years of dedicated fundraising followed in order to provide the necessary external facilities required, especially for disabled people.
Currently, the horticultural facilities at the Centre are excellent and include polytunnels and sheds, accessible raised beds, border areas with shrubs and flowers, themed gardens, vegetable plots, a composting station monitored by the Environment Agency, a computerised irrigation system and a large soft-fruit cage. In 2003 Charlie Dimmock, the TV personality, performed our opening ceremony and the first clients were able to use the Centre. Since then the Charity has operated from an old, temporary, modular building, which was already second-hand when we purchased it. We have outgrown the building as our organisation has developed and it is unsuitable for our current needs because of lack of classroom and administrative space, poor facilities and services, and with toilets behind thin partition walls. It is cold and damp in the winter and too hot in summer. It has always been the intention to house the Charity in purpose-built, permanent accommodation. We have now reached a stage in our development where, for the reasons described above, we need a new building with better facilities and more space.
The Trustees feel that the Charity is now sufficiently established in terms of financial stability to move into the next phase of its development by erecting a permanent building on the site. With a dynamic architect on board, and with new planning permission recently granted, the Trustees have been able to move forward with plans to construct the building, which will be similar to those that the local archery club and bowls club have erected on the Manor Fruit Farm site and which will fit in with the surroundings far better than our existing building.
Therefore, the Trustees have now commenced the construction of an energy efficient, timber-framed building. This will provide proper teaching classrooms, providing our vulnerable clients and students with a much-improved learning environment. There will be enhanced administrative areas, and improved toilet facilities. There will be a room where service users, some of whom are physically disabled, can rest if they become overtired. There will be a full-sized kitchen, stores and a shop. The new kitchen will give us the opportunity to start a “Skills for Working Life” course in catering for our special needs students. There will be secure storage areas as an integral part of the design, which will help prevent the theft of machinery from which we have previously suffered. The construction will be to building regulation standard with high insulation and low CO2 emissions. Solar energy is proposed and the building will have a controlled, zoned, heating system, further reducing the use of energy. Rainwater will be harvested to water butts and irrigation tanks for watering the gardens. Once the new building is complete, the existing temporary structure will be removed from the site enabling us to reclaim a large area of the garden, where more fruit and vegetables can be grown for sale.
We have broken the project into five phases. £24,500 was raised for Phase 1, the foundations and footings, which were laid in October 2009. For phase 2 we raised £56,037 in just under a year, from community donations, fundraising events and grants from Charitable Trusts and Foundations. This provided the timber-framed building, cladding, tiled roof, windows and doors. Construction started in late October 2010 and was completed early in January 2011.
Phase 3, to complete the inside, has cost a further £45,000, which has already been raised, and the building is now nearing completion.
Phase 4, costing £22,482, is to re-landscape the external infrastructure around the new building to make it more accessible to both disabled and able-bodied people. We have so far raised £12,000. We need to:
- adapt the heavy, steel, entrance gates so there is suitable pedestrian access to the shop and new building
- provide paved pathways to the shop and building, and to extend existing pathways once the old building is removed, with hand-rails, to provide safe access for service users and visitors
- construct a patio area, which service-users can use at break-times, and for the local community to use when they visit
- provide advertising signage for the new shop, and a notice-board to make the local community aware of what is happening at the Therapy Garden
- construct a short tarmac driveway for deliveries by lorries, and for residents who bring green waste to the garden in cars to be composted, so paved pathways are not broken, causing a trip hazard
Phase 5 is for furnishing the new building including floor covering and blinds, computers and equipping the shop. This will cost £14,290. We could, of course, use the furniture from the old building. However, this was second-hand when the Charity opened its doors for the first time in 2003 and has become fairly battered over the years. We feel that our service-users, volunteers and staff deserve better, and believe that the time spent raising funds for this aspect of the project will be worthwhile and move the Charity into the next phase of its development.
Although our main beneficiaries are young people with special needs and adults with mental health problems, learning difficulties, physical disabilities and special needs, the local community will also benefit in a number of ways. The chemical-free fruit and vegetables we grow are a valuable source of income for us and last year we earned over £2,300 from this source. However, currently this has to be sold at the local doctors’ surgery and village hall. The shop in the new building will enable us to sell our produce direct to customers, and will enable us to further extend the courses on offer to our service users to include a “Skills for Working Life” course in retailing, where service users will be able to plant, grow, crop, prepare, market and sell the produce, giving them further experience and life-skills. There are now no shops left in the village, apart from a farm produce store that opens part-time, and so this will provide a new local retail outlet for fruit and vegetables. It is hoped that, rather than driving to local towns to buy their provisions, residents will buy their package-free greengrocery from us.
Since the Charity will normally only use the building during the day it will be available in the evenings for other activities and will provide a much-needed additional facility in the village as well as helping us generate extra income. The new building will also provide the opportunity to have a community library of horticultural publications, adding a further resource to the services already offered.
If you would like to make a donation to the “Building Fund Appeal”, right click here and choose "save link as" to download a form and return it, with your donation, to:“Little Glaziers”, 120 Glaziers Lane, Normandy, GU3 2DQ or “Woodard”, Guildford Road, Normandy, GU3 2DA (a few houses past the Hyundai garage towards Aldershot) or you can use the post box outside the gates at the Therapy Garden site on Manor Fruit Farm. If you are a taxpayer please can you Gift Aid your donation, as we can claim 20p in the £ back.
The support we have received, both locally and from further a field, has been tremendous and means that our dream of a new building is now becoming a reality. If you are on the Manor Fruit Farm site at any time, do call in and see how the work is progressing. You will be very welcome.
