Church Community Garden officially open!

The grand opening of the community garden to the side of St Mary’s and St Edmunds church lifted all our spirits and our sense of community.

This was the brainchild of the Community, Environment and Gardening CAS groups who conducted an air pollution study in Ingatestone, a loneliness study of the impact of COVID post pandemic and who discovered that key issues for Ingatestone were safe open places for teenagers to meet and chat and accessible spaces for coffee and conversation for both young Mums and the disabled. Phase 1 of the project met its completion goals this week. The space has been cleared and raised beds, built by the Youth Offending team have been created and flowers planted by our Gardening Club.

The centre piece – a hexagonal seating space has been commissioned and installed and the planting design, which our Gardening Club planned, was funded by the RHS and implemented. Bird boxes were designed as a result of an enrichment project run by our Technology Department for our local feeder primaries and our Year 10 Technology students then built them to the primary students’ winning prototypes. It was the result of over a year of research, fund-raising, landscaping and planting and a wonderful joint community project where our students were highly commended for their citizenship and enthusiasm.

Anglo European School