People
Digswell Nurseries offers real work experience to many people from the local community. We provide training and support to people with a learning disability, physical disability, mental health problems and people recovering from a brain injury.
These people provide the core of our team working alongside the staff and volunteers, contributing not only in the physical work of horticulture, but also in the development and management of the nurseries.
Work-based training is offered in all areas of the Nurseries from planting seedlings and watering the plants, to soft landscaping the gardens and serving customers in the shop and coffee shop.
The work of the team is complemented by our partnership with North Herts College where we provide work placements to the unemployed. This scheme has allowed the Nurseries to benefit from individuals’ skills to develop the site and expand our range of facilities.
Digswell Nurseries is a vibrant, happy place, which combines the benefits of therapeutic horticulture with the fulfilment that can be gained from real work experience.
When the idea of the training centre was conceived in 1995, it set out to provide horticultural training in a real work setting for people with a learning disability.
By its tenth birthday, the centre was not only achieving its original goal, but was now offering these opportunities to people from all vulnerable groups of the local community. Not only does it offer people the opportunity to participate in the day to day running of the centre, but it also encourages people to have ownership of their own project, and to actively contribute to the management and development of the centre.
As the centre now enters its next decade, it is apparent that the benefits it can offer should be available to the wider community in a variety of ways.
As well as the many greenhouses, polytunnels and barns that we use to grow our seasonal crops, the site boasts a large expanse of land, some maintained and developed, some not so. Over the past decade, students, volunteers and staff have designed, planted and maintained shrub and flower beds, and members of the public and community groups have benefitted from this hard work.