Who are we?

Natureworks Training CIC and its sister Social Enterprise Organic Blooms, are the culmination of the vision, creativity, and 22 years hard work of Jo and Wendy and what an interesting and inspirational journey!  A journey that is turning its next corner - with your help.

What do we do?

We believe that the right kind of work is life changing - providing structure, distraction, an income and self worth - and what could be better than working on an organic flower farm!

Jo: 'Fresh out of University, with a degree in horticulture, I knew that plants alone weren't enough - it was their relationship with people that I was most interested in!'

Wendy:  'For me, mainstream floristry wasn't fulfilling me - I needed something more grounded, more real...'

27 years later we have an award winning social enterprise, certified organic, flower farm that provides structure, training, employment, inspiration and hope for over 30 people with support needs.

The shocking reality

In 2020-21 just 5.1% of working age adults with a learning disability and receiving support were in paid employment,

and only 9% of people using secondary mental health services are employed. (NHS digital)

From our 25 years of working with people who have long term support needs, we know that they have the same dreams and aspirations as anyone else, including the desire to have a paid job.

We pride ourselves in the fact that we are really good at what we do!  We don't trade on the 'sympathy vote' - we produce a quality product that customers' value and we have adapted our business so that people who are normally excluded from the labour market are central to its production and share the rewards of its success - both a sense of pride and wages! 

So why do we need your help?

Social enterprises such as ours typically cost around 30% more to run than an equivalent commercial business due to their higher staffing and support ratios and accommodations to create an inclusive workplace.  All our profits are reinvested into job creation, support, and building the best, most accessible working and training environment. We strive to create the best possible working environment that you could wish for.

Jo: 'My best day is when I look across our flower field and see groups of people being quietly productive, absorbed in their work, helping each other and feeling satisfied with a good job done.'

Our employees and trainees want to come to work every day and feel part of something special and bigger than themselves.

Despite our success as a social enterprise, our revenue income doesn't enable us to make large capital purchases or scale up quickly enough to meet demand. 

In 2018 we ran an amazing Crowdfunding campaign to purchase a florist studio and multispan polytunnel

This took us to the next level and enabled us to take on a big national contract supplying much larger volumes of certified organic plants and cut flowers to Abel&Cole, an organic subscription delivery service.  This enabled us to employ an extra 6 people with support needs.

We held our own during the pandemic - demand for our flowers increased in some areas, but weddings and event flower sales were hit hard.  Our team valued the oasis of our flower farm and the structure of a work routine even more than ever.

Rebuilding after 2 unprecedented years of global anxiety and isolation is a challenge for every organisation, but especially for small community businesses working with the most vulnerable people in society.  

What do we need?

Quite simply, we have run out of space to accommodate all our wonderful trainees and workers and have space for packing and dispatch as our volumes increase.  

We believe that providing a high quality, well designed environment for people shows that they are valued and enables them to perform to their best.  We need to organise workspaces with thought to encourage healthy work practices, to enable independence and efficiency and reduce stress. 

We would love a simple, wooden building which is light and airy and can be used as a classroom and rest area.  It can also double up as a workshop space for the huge range of  community courses and school groups that we are planning to host this  year, now that restrictions are nearly over.  Bringing the community in, either by way of local volunteers, customers, corporate events or visiting community groups is something we encourage at our flower farm.  It breaks down barriers, challenges perceptions,  provides role models and broadens everyone's horizons.

With a new building, we will also be able to renovate our original building and create a purpose built packing room and kitchen for a new microenterprise that we want to launch this year - supplying certified organic edible flowers and cut herbs.

With inclusivity at the core of everything we do, we feel that this is an ideal enterprise for people who have support needs and we intend to create 4-6 paid job roles specifically for people who cannot access mainstream employment by developing this new enterprise.

Your donations can make this a reality for us.  We are not afraid of hard work and have an amazing, capable team who can make this happen.  We also have a several established routes to market so this is not a shot in the dark - we will be able to create between 4 and 6 new sustainable paid jobs if we can build new work spaces.  These jobs are sometimes the key to recovery, inclusion and individuals finally becoming the people they were meant to be.

We will be sharing some personal stories throughout our campaign about what work at Organic Blooms has done for the people who work here.

We thank you for your support - please send this link to anyone who you think may be interested in supporting us.  This campaign only runs for 4 weeks.