Brackley care home is first winner of Kingsley Green Garden Competition

Kingsley, a UK top 20 ranked large care home group (carehome.co.uk), challenged staff at its homes around the country to show their green credentials by devising schemes to improve the environment.Projects included sensory gardens to enhance resident wellbeing, vegetable and herb gardens to supply the kitchen and a variety of schemes to attract wildlife - even one including a creative squirrel obstacle courst at Gower Gardens, in the West Midlands!

Kingsley co-founder Sumi Thayan, one of the judges from the company's operations team, said: "We had a fantastic response. Enhancing the beautiful gardens of our care homes is the perfect way to demonstrate our commitment to green values as well as improving amenities for our residents."

What impressed judges so much about Brackley Care Home was the way the whole community had become involved in transforming the garden into a green oasis since its opening in Wellington Road, Brackley, Northamptonshire, at the end of 2020.

The home's Customer Relations Manager, Julie Wilson, said: "Starting from scratch, we are delighted with what we have achieved. So many people have played their part, including the children from local schools who entered our competition to design an area of the garden for visiting families."

Raised beds were an impressive feature of the garden, allowing residents and staff to grow vegetables, herbs, and fruit for use in the kitchen.

Barbara Foley, who heads up the Activities Team at Brackley Care Home and who is an avid gardener herself said the absolute foundation of a successful garden was really good soil which resulted from really good compost.

"We have a double compost heap which we started about 18 months ago and our wonderful kitchen staff place all vegetable peelings there, which we then turn into compost," Barbara said.

The Brackley team has also focused on encouraging local wildlife, including birds, bees, hedgehogs, foxes, and on one occasion a weasel. In this vein, we will shortly be taking delivery of a bee hive, complete with a colony of bees, which will be maintained by a local specialist Brackley organisation and we look forward to having our own beautiful honey for our residents.

Barbara said: "We have linked up with Brackley Hogwatch which is an amazing charity that monitors, protects and rehabilitates hedgehogs. We were lucky enough to have a hedgehog house donated to us and we have placed that in a quiet sheltered spot in our garden and a hedgehog has already taken up residence".

Over the past couple of years, they have been encouraging birds to visit the garden and take up residence in nesting boxes which were decorated by residents and placed in sheltered places.

"Our residents also decorated bug boxes which have been placed along our fence and these will encourage ladybirds, solitary bees, solitary wasps, spiders and wood lice which perform the necessray task of breaking down leaf matter," said Barbara.

The two runners up in the competition were Branksome Heights care home, in Bournemouth, Dorset and Allonsfield House care home, in Campsea Ashe, Suffolk.