Breakthrough for Gardens group

I Had some excellent news today about a project I’m very keen to see succeed.

Elford Hall Walled Gardens are an historic site near Elford village which, despite being in Staffordshire, is actually owned in Trust by Birmingham City Council. The Walled Garden which dates back to 1705 and Gardener’s Cottage which is Victorian have fallen into serious disrepair over the last fifty or so years.

You may remember around a year ago I got involved with helping out a group of Elford villagers who are very keen to see the cottage and gardens restored to their former glory. It’s fair to say that, for a variety of reasons, Birmingham weren’t cooperating at that time but after some encouragement from me a dialogue of sorts started.

After much frustration and a number of false starts Birmingham have finally agreed to support the project and start the legal work to offer the group a peppercorn rent lease on the whole site. The ambitious plan is to restore the wall around the garden and add leisure facilities and traditional orchards and workshops to the garden area partly using labour from Swinfen Young Offenders’ Institution.

The hope is that while the Gardens are being worked upon the inmates from Swinfen will be learning traditional skills which will be useful when they are released back into society. As I said ambitious and, some may say, bold. With the group’s track record on the fabulous Millennium Playground they built from scratch I have no doubt they will succeed given time.

So, it’s all systems go and I’m meeting the group on Monday evening to see how I can assist further. I did have the thought that it may be a good idea to start some sort of ‘Friends of Elford Gardens’ scheme. Something I’m sure we’ll discuss next week.

Although I’m not directly involved I must admit I’m quite excited at the thought of the restoration and particularly the innovative approach. I’ll write more in due course.

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