Launceston’s Community Garden

Dreadnought, Launceston, works with 8 – 19 year olds who are experiencing problems in their lives. We provide positive adults who listen and support children and young people in a safe environment such as in our Launceston centre on St Thomas Road. Many of our young people expressed a wish to “get out in the fresh air” and perhaps do some gardening.

Our young people took up the challenge of designing their own garden. With a few donations from the public (including basic tools) the children, young people and volunteers began work on the garden. With lots of ideas but very little money we applied to various organisations for funding. The CCF kindly approved a £300 grant for our garden project. This grant enabled us to begin putting our ideas into action.

Thanks to the grant from CCF, our garden soon started to take shape and has been transformed into a beautiful, welcoming community garden.

Because we have many volunteers and members of the public coming to support our garden project, young people are seeing first-hand that people of all ages want to help each other and work together, and young and old are greeting each other, breaking down preconceptions on both sides.

The garden is now officially open to the community, and we have had grandparents visiting with their grandchildren, enjoying the calming atmosphere in the garden, especially when the sun is shining!

The most amazing result of our project, in my opinion, is the visible impact that it has made on the confidence and self-esteem of our young people; receiving praise from members of the public about the garden’s progress has been a huge boost to them, and shows that people of all ages working together in a community can make a positive difference.

Lesley, Dreadnought Launceston