Townend Community Garden – Community Garden Manager

We are a fully set up community garden, with a variety of growing areas and wildlife habitats. Our mission is to provide a safe, healthy outdoor environment where local residents can meet to grow flowers and crops, or just sit and enjoy the outdoors and tranquillity. We support adults with mental health issues, physical or learning disabilities and older lonely, isolated people. Our garden is fully accessible for people with disabilities.

We aim to work in a sustainable, environmentally friendly way. We garden organically as far as possible, using different techniques in the vegetable beds – no-dig, companion planting and four-crop rotation.

We keep abreast of good practice, for instance we use peat-free compost and we have researched different brands to find ones we are happy with. We make our own compost and we collect horse manure from a nearby farm, in order to ensure healthy soil and crops. We have no water on tap, so we use rainwater collected on site.

This is an amazing opportunity for someone to take forward a well-established and highly valued community garden, as the current manager is retiring because of ill health. The garden has been beautifully landscaped with a variety of growing areas – raised beds and safe paths to give full access to people with limited mobility, large grassed areas with fruit trees, and wild areas to encourage biodiversity, including a small pond. We grow organically, and have experimented with different techniques – no dig, companion planting and crop rotation. We are committed to peat-free compost and are working towards  making our own potting compost. We have a large greenhouse and are setting up solar powered energy for light and heat. All in all, this is an exciting opportunity to really make our contribution to climate change and sustaining our wildlife.

Would suit a retired professional gardener or experienced amateur gardener with an interest in supporting the physical and mental wellbeing of our volunteers and other garden users. A shared post for two would be ideal as the role will include managing the administration of the garden.