Over the past few months, Landscapes Naturally have been busy in Coventry and Edgbaston, working with homeless young people aged 16-24, to help them transform their local hostels’ outdoor spaces to be welcoming and productive.
Felicity Robinson, Director of Landscapes Naturally, works as a freelancer for Learning through Landscapes, a UK charity dedicated to enhancing learning and play for children and young people.
The charity has been running projects to plant orchards with hostel residents for over 3 years Felicity has been supporting this project, working with the young people living in hostels in Sussex and the West Midlands on the ‘Fruitfull’ Orchard Projects, getting them involved in the design and planning of their hostel’s outdoor spaces, to accommodate the planting of fruit trees and shrubs.
As well as focusing on design, fruit tasting has also been a feature of these workshops, helping the young people involved to decide on what fruit they would like planted. The trees they have selected will then be planted by them over the coming months.
Felicity stated: “Many of these young people have never tasted some of the fruits we can grow in England, nor thought about such a variety of fruit that they can grow locally, so this was part of the project they all enjoyed”
The project has proven very popular with these young people with one participant in the project stating, “I didn’t know there were so many different apples” and another stating “It would be good to be able to pick healthy fruit from the hostel garden”.
Participants at Muirhead House in Coventry have also been working on an artwork installation that will be incorporated within the outdoor space. Here is one of the pieces that a participant has produced for this installation:
Stay tuned over the next few months where we will sharing an update of when the orchards have been finished.
If your school, hostel or residential accomodation has been inspired by the idea of adding an orchard to the outdoor space get in touch with Felicity at Landscapes Naturally. Your students or residents will take pride in working alongside professionals to develop a unique and productive space and find out more about future careers too.
These orchard projects provide a great opportunity for your students to get creative and put their own stamp on an outdoor spaces. Taking part helps them learn more about how things grow, how to care for plants and experiment with taste and new fruits.