10 Oct 2022 Community

The Kirkwood gardening team strike gold in the Yorkshire In Bloom competition

The Kirkwood volunteer gardeners have struck gold once again, winning GOLD in this year’s Yorkshire in Bloom Awards in the Rose Charitable Establishment Award.

Keeping up the high standards set out in 2019 sharing our success with Barnsley Hospice, consecutively for the last two years.

Our team of gardeners work tirelessly to keep up the high standard of our garden, making sure it looks blooming magnificent all year round. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic when restrictions allowed, the team continued to keep the open space accessible and inviting for when restrictions eased, and our patients and families could come together once again in the outdoor space.

It is a huge achievement to be awarded the prize of gold as part of the largest horticultural campaign in Europe, The Kirkwood garden was judged on criteria such as horticultural, environmental and community factors, our head volunteer gardener Linda Roberts collected the award last Friday at the Yorkshire In Bloom conference award ceremony, she commented: “We are delighted to pick up the award, it is much deserved as all the volunteers have worked incredibly hard to make the garden the peaceful and tranquil place that it is, for patients and staff to relax and enjoy.”

The Kirkwood garden has brought much peace to many people over the years with it’s extremely bright and colourful plants and flowers, with an abundance of delightful aromas, fruitful allotment and wild flower space, offering a feast for the senses, such as the tranquillity of the trickling sounds of the pond area, the birds in the trees or the insects making use of our wild area. Focusing on both the physical and mental benefits of being in the fresh air amongst the beauty of the everchanging seasons the garden has to offer.

The garden supports aquatic, land and amphibious life, some of which chooses our space to create their habitats, like earlier this summer when we were graced with the presence of duck eggs nested in one of our patient planters, later hatching and taking the leap of faith down from the terrace to the pond to be with mum. The Kirkwood supports life with the care we give to our patients and our feathered garden visitors too.

Don’t just take or word for it, here is what our award-winning gardening team had to say:

“To win the award is fantastic, we as a volunteer team work very hard to keep improving the garden all the time. It has been hard this summer particularly with the heat and so we’ve had to manage that carefully. One thing I love about our garden is that there are so many parts to it, but one of the best bits is the vegetable patch and the compost area. It is a working garden, so the vegetable patch feeds the people within the hospice and the compost area helps to grow the garden in several ways.” - Val

Ann has been part of the gardening team for the last 18 years and has seen it change over many years. She was delighted to hear that we had won the award, she said: “I have seen the garden change over time and different people have brought different ideas, we work as one big team and so to win gold again was just brilliant. It means all the hard work we put in is rewarded.”

“It was wonderful to hear that we had won the award, as others have said the whole volunteer team deserve it. We are planning on even more people seeing the garden this year through different events being held in it and so that will be good to see too as more people get to see the hard work, we put in.” mentioned Glenys.

“It is a fantastic achievement for us the volunteers, we love coming every week and we are very proud of it, we did our best during the pandemic to keep it looking as good as it could and now, we are back properly we have big plans for it going forward. I personally love the pond area; I think it brings a different dynamic to the garden and we have a lot of wildlife that interact with it which is great.” - Denise

Once again what a fantastic achievement, congratulations and thank you! – from all The Kirkwood team.