Growing Sudley CIC is a social enterprise that provides health and well-being through nature. HSA have been working with Growing Sudley for over 12 years, helping to establish the social enterprise and delivering pilot projects such as forest schools, holiday clubs and funded sessions for vulnerable adults.

From initial public consultations with residents and park users, projects were piloted to trial different activities in the garden, testing spatially and environmentally how they worked and helping to shape a more permanent brief for the long-term vision. This included how the garden would function, and also how it would be maintained. We used a range of methods to engage the widest demographic to contribute to the co-design, explaining the various constraints that come with limited funding and listed buildings and working out ways to overcome them together. Harrison Stringfellow assisted in developing a website and social media presence to facilitate public engagement and discussion around the Sudley site during its early development.

Collages were produced to visually represent many of the ideas the community had for the space: from allotments to star gazing to a viewing tower that would take in the fabulous vistas of the city, the Mersey and the Welsh hills beyond. A public consultation and questionnaire circulated to residents and park users showed some kind of horticulture project as being the most popular use of the walled garden by far. 

During Spring-Autumn 2017-2020, we ran 4 years of pilot projects. These consisted of regular gardening and outdoor sessions with adults with disabilities and health conditions, and outdoor holiday clubs for local school children. The holiday club grew in popularity, is now in its 8th year and sells out quickly.  Some of the children who attended the first sessions are now volunteering for their Duke of Edinburgh Awards. 

The pilot projects at Growing Sudley played a pivotal role in holistically developing a vision for the garden and wider organisation. These early initiatives continued to grow community involvement at a grassroots level and provided invaluable insight into what makes a truly functional, inclusive outdoor play and therapy space.  Community ideas and feedback were directly woven into the final garden design developed with Howard Miller.

HSA worked with Howard Miller Design, taking the developed garden brief from the many engagement sessions to be a flexible, biodiverse and accessible space on a limited budget that could evolve over time.

The design enables the many different uses that have developed in the garden to coexist, with landscaping and paths forming natural shapes that define these zones of the garden, whilst also making it more accessible to wheelchairs, scooters and people with mobility issues.

The garden has been zoned into 3 main areas: the woodland area, with coppiced hazels and fire circle, foraging edges and an accessible boardwalk so everyone can get into the woods; the garden area, with woven willow raised beds for therapeutic horticulture and growing healing herbs and flowers; and the meadow, surrounded by wildflowers and providing a space for qigong and yoga, as well as picnics and community events. 

Through developing the business plan for Growing Sudley, HSA designed the conversion of the adjacent derelict Changing Rooms building into an income generator for the garden through a mixture of paid activity, events and rental income. 

Read more about the Changing Room sustainable retrofit here.