A garden centre in the heart of Manchester's urban environment offers locals respite from bustling city life, and provides a range of well-being and learning opportunities for the community.
Hulme Community Garden Centre is a unique site committed to promoting healthy living while gardening through a volunteer and education hub, community activities, and more.
The vibrant garden centre was established in 2000 and sells ethical and sustainably sourced plants.
Now, spring is here; the flowers are beginning to bloom, and more and more people are checking out what the site has to offer.
We went down to take a look at the centre and community space, and find out which plants we should be buying for spring.
Hulme Community Garden Centre is a unique site committed to promoting healthy living while gardening through a volunteer and education hub, community activities, and more.
The vibrant garden centre was established in 2000 and sells ethical and sustainably sourced plants.
Now, spring is here; the flowers are beginning to bloom, and more and more people are checking out what the site has to offer.
We went down to take a look at the centre and community space, and find out which plants we should be buying for spring.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 "It's not like a normal garden centre because it's got beautiful gardens you can spend time in
00:05 and we have all sorts of events throughout the year. It's a bit of a quirky place."
00:11 A garden centre in the heart of Manchester's urban environment offers locals respite from
00:16 bustling city life and provides a range of wellbeing and learning opportunities for the
00:21 community. Hume Community Garden Centre is a unique site committed to promoting healthy
00:26 living while gardening through a volunteer and education hub, community activities and more.
00:31 The vibrant garden centre was established in 2000 and sells ethical and sustainably sourced plants.
00:38 Now spring is here, the flowers are beginning to bloom and more and more people are checking
00:42 out what the site has to offer. We went down to take a look at the centre and community space
00:47 and find out which plants we should be buying for spring. "So we've got some lovely examples
00:52 just here. Snowdrops are really nice as an early flower and also another one is these
00:59 Eranthus hyamalis, their common name is Wood anemone and they're another really lovely early
01:04 one. So the flowers have gone over but you can see on the picture there, they're a lovely like
01:10 bright bit of colour and these like come really early in the year. Very cheery. Daffodils are
01:15 lovely. We've got English bluebells as well, the native bluebells, so they're really lovely.
01:21 All these bulbs, once you get them in, they'll just bulk up so once you've got a few, they'll
01:26 keep clumping up and you can split them and have more and more every year so you'll get
01:29 more for your money. It's really important for people to come together and it doesn't matter
01:36 in what context that really is I think, but here it's particularly nice because it's nature focused
01:43 as well. Being outdoors is the first step of kind of getting out of the house for a lot of people so
01:50 there is that as well, you know, it's not just doing something at home, it's actually like
01:54 taking yourself out of that situation. I can't really explain why nature is so important for
01:59 mental health but I just know that everybody feels it when you walk outside and you reconnect
02:04 with nature, you do immediately. It just lifts your spirits. Community is like really at the heart
02:10 of what we do here and also sustainability and biodiversity. We're a not-for-profit organisation
02:17 and everything that we're selling, all the profits feed back into keeping the centre open so we've
02:24 got lovely gardens that people can spend time in so we try and encourage the community to come in,
02:29 we have school visits. In an urban area, just being able to feel like you're in touch with
02:35 nature is so beneficial and we get quite a lot of people who come here to volunteer who
02:41 they say maybe their family were really into gardening or they might have grown up on a farm
02:46 but now they live in the city and they don't even have a garden, they might have a tiny balcony
02:51 but they just want the chance to get their hands dirty and have contact with plants.