Help the Cornish Cutting Garden Grow and Blossom

Aim

To expand our supported work experience for vulnerable people, run workshops and open as a destination venue for summer 2015.

Project Aim

To fulfill a demand for high quality, personalised support to enable our individuals to progress to employment and independent living. The money will  also be spent on creating a workshop and cafe that reflect the ethos of our beautiful and sustainable garden . We will also build holding ponds for recycling grey and rainwater, solar water heaters, a log burner and compost toilets.

                                                                           Who are we?

The Cornish Cutting Garden is in the beautiful hamlet of Releath near Helston in Cornwall. Our founder, Clare Webb is a qualified florist and garden designer. Clare's passion and vision has attracted like-minded others who have given up their previous jobs to work with her and we are now a team of three, plus volunteers. The garden is designed to support biodiversity and sustainability through organic principles and function as a therapeutic space.

What do we do?

We grow and arrange organic flowers, whilst offering supported work experience to vulnerable people,  supplying beautiful flower arrangements for weddings and many other occasions. We will be setting up a Community Interest Company to extend our work experience opportunities, offer a range of workshops and expand our growing space for artisan floristry.

Why is it so important?Vulnerable people in rural communities find it very difficult to access work and other opportunities. There is very little support available for people who need a supportive work placement. There is a lot of good quality research evidence of the benefits of gardening for people with disabilities and mental health difficulties. We provide all these things in the garden, whilst giving people real skills and the satisfaction of being part of a real business. For example, Charlie comes to us once a week and does everything from sowing seeds, to painting plant labels to helping pick the flowers for a bride's bouquet and his family say “It is Charlie's best day of the week”.

Our flowers are only sold locally so they have no air miles, we can grow unusual varieties not seen in a conventional florist's, they last much longer because they are never out of water, they are free from harmful pesticides and they are ever changing with the seasons. Our brides love our flowers, with feedback such as:

“Thank you so much for the lovely flowers! They were everything I had dreamed of especially my bouquet! It was stunning”

“Thank you so much for the amazing bouquet, it exceeded all my expectations!”

"I just want to say a massive thank you for being so lovely and helpful and for growing the most beautiful flowers in the world! We had so many comments on them throughout the day. Coming to your stunning garden was the highlight of the whole wedding experience!"

What will the money be used for?The crowd funding bid would enable us to make improvements to the building in order to run workshops and open the garden to the public as a destination venue. We already have participants booked into workshops, which will be a lot more comfortable if we can make these improvements before then. This means building compost toilets, insulating our roof and building a cafe. The fund will provide seed funding for a member of staff to enable us to provide more supported work placements.

This project closed unsuccessfully on 17th February 2015