TRIANGLE COMMUNITY GARDEN
The Triangle Community Garden is a charity in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. Our vision is for a community where people feel happier and more fulfilled through a connection with the natural world and an understanding of our place in it. Our mission is to help people of all ages and abilities lead more fulfilling lives, through community gardening and contact with the natural world. We do this by supporting physical and mental health through our social therapeutic horticulture projects, providing volunteering opportunities outdoors in nature, hosting family forest school activities, wildlife walks and creative nature-related workshops, and running cookery classes for men.
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The Triangle Garden was started in 1999 by a small group of Hitchin residents to create an open space that could be used creatively by the community. Using sustainable gardening methods, a patch of nettles was transformed into a secret glade, pollinators garden, mini heritage orchard and forest garden by a group of passionate volunteers. The biodiversity of the area increased dramatically and the local community gained access to existing habitats such as our local chalk stream.
Over time our activities have expanded to include supporting people with disabilities through social and therapeutic horticulture (STH) activities. Our support for people with disabilities was born out of a lack of opportunities in our area. We identified that school leavers with disabilities had limited access to further educational, physical and employment related activities. Many of the people interested in taking part in gardening activities with us had moderate disabilities and as such were not catered for by traditional day services. We saw a desire to take part in activities that were more physically and intellectually stimulating than what was currently on offer. Many people we encountered were in receipt of lower levels of funding and so had less spending power. This meant they could not afford a day centre which required paying for a whole day of services. Instead, they were looking for services that ran on a session-by-session basis. In response to this need we started to run sessional STH activities for people with disabilities alongside our regular general volunteering sessions. We currently run 6 sessions a week supporting 40+ gardeners. Our focus is on working with people with learning disabilities and mental health issues.