In Funding Stories, Reducing isolation & disadvantage

Project: Preparing an area of wasteland to function as a user-friendly garden for Black Park Shed members
Grant: £1,500
Fund: South Bucks Fund

Black Park Shed, located in the area of the old sawmill in Black Park in South Bucks, is a non-profit association offering members of the community a space to meet, socialise and engage in practical activities such as woodwork and gardening.

The Shed provides a friendly space for its members, often either unemployed or retired individuals who have not been previously linked with other social groups, to share experiences, knowledge and skills in a safe and enjoyable environment and to make friends for life with others who share interests and a common purpose.

With their grant of £1,500 from the South Bucks Fund, Black Park Shed has been able to complete the first phase of their new garden development, transforming an area of wasteland near their meeting place into a user-friendly garden designed and built by the association’s members.

Black Park Shed have completed the initial landscaping of the area, purchasing materials that have enabled them to build raised bed planters, erect trellis fencing and lay down grass turves and pea shingle around planters.

Not only will the garden become a space where people can meet and work together upon its completion, the process of creating the space has, in itself, brought the members of Black Park Shed together. All members took an active part in constructing the garden and, as progress is made, members are seeing the potential of the communal space and looking at ways to make the area a special place for people to sit and relax.

 “Projects like our garden would be very difficult to complete in the timescale we wanted without the financial help provided by Heart of Bucks” – Black Park Shed member