Volunteer Gardener - Young Onset Dementia Group

Job overview

With an underused sensory garden and garden at the back, Highpoint House, home to Children & Young People’s therapies, has an invaluable opportunity to:-

• Bring people together to improve their health and wellbeing
• Improve the aesthetics of the sensory garden
• Be creative in providing a calm and relaxing space within the sensory garden
• Co-produce with service users and the local community
• Improve biodiversity through plant diversity
• Provide good quality habitat for wildlife
• Allow nature to be therapeutic
• Increase the quality of access to nature
• Reduce harmful practice in daily practice to limit the loss to our eco-systems.

Main duties of the job

Key Task and Responsibilities:

A volunteer would provide invaluable support to:

• Maintain planted areas, with regular watering, weeding, mulching etc.
• Support improvements to the sensory garden
• Create wildlife habitats, such as insect hotels, bird boxes
• Monitor butterflies, pollinators, plants and other wildlife
• Work alongside and support volunteer gardener at Memorial Hospital site
• Work with small groups of service users as ‘garden buddies’
• Share knowledge and experience with ‘garden buddies’
• Encourage participation of ‘garden buddies’
• Maintain and monitor the upkeep of any tools and materials
• Report any concerns or issues about ‘garden buddies’ to named          employee for Oxleas NHS Trust at that time
• Report any concerns or issues about the garden or materials to the Sustainability Manager

When working with Oxleas Service Users:

Responsibility for the group (or any service user working with the volunteer) will lie with a named employee of Oxleas NHS Trust.  Someone employed by the Trust will be with the group (or individual) throughout any activity

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

With a underused sensory garden and garden at the back, Highpoint House, home to Children & Young People’s therapies has an invaluable opportunity to:-

Key Task and Responsibilities:

• Bring people together to improve their health and wellbeing
• Improve the aesthetics of the sensory garden
• Be creative in providing a calm and relaxing space within the sensory garden
• Co-produce with service users and the local community
• Improve biodiversity through plant diversity
• Provide good quality habitat for wildlife
• Allow nature to be therapeutic
• Increase the quality of access to nature
• Reduce harmful practice in daily practice to limit the loss to our eco-systems.

A volunteer would provide invaluable support to:

• Maintain planted areas, with regular watering, weeding, mulching etc.
• Support improvements to the sensory garden
• Create wildlife habitats, such as insect hotels, bird boxes
• Monitor butterflies, pollinators, plants and other wildlife
• Work alongside and support volunteer gardener at Memorial Hospital site
• Work with small groups of service users as ‘garden buddies’
• Share knowledge and experience with ‘garden buddies’
• Encourage participation of ‘garden buddies’
• Maintain and monitor the upkeep of any tools and materials
• Report any concerns or issues about ‘garden buddies’ to named          employee for Oxleas NHS Trust at that time
• Report any concerns or issues about the garden or materials to the Sustainability Manager

When working with Oxleas Service Users:

• Responsibility for the group (or any service user working with the volunteer) will lie with a named employee of Oxleas NHS Trust.  Someone employed by the Trust will be with the group (or individual) throughout any activity