This year the Eden Project’s Growing for Life programme has pulled together a range of partners to give more than 500 homeless people and service users a chance to plant, design and build the biggest ever garden at the Chelsea Flower Show.

The garden is a great demonstration of the accessibility of horticulture. Creating a garden together has proved to be ideal for nurturing skills and growing confidence in the people, as well as acting as stepping stone to other forms of skills development from design and construction to IT and creative media. The approach taken to the development and partnerships involved in the Places for Change garden could also be useful in demonstrating how other community gardens or green space projects could engage with hard-to reach groups and act as a catalyst for developing valuable community roles and skills.

Follow the link to an article about the garden on the Guardian website, complete with an embedded film.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/may/18/eden-homeless-chelsea-flower-show

Partners in the project are also contributing to a blog, see link below

http://www.placesofchangegarden.org.uk/