Forest Of Hearts

Forest Of Hearts

At a glance

Causes

  • Education
  • Environment
  • Gardens and parks
  • Health and well being / research and care
  • Learning disabilities / difficulties
  • Local / community
  • Men
  • Mental health
  • Older people / later life
  • Physical disabilities
  • Women
  • Young people

Other details

Geographical remit: 
Local

Objectives

Forest of Hearts works with people experiencing anxiety, social isolation and mental health issues with projects aimed at improving health and well-being whilst caring for the environment.  Our aims are to:

  1. Promote health and well-being
  2. Do something useful for the environment
  3. Encourage employee engagement
  4. Support biodiversity education
  5. Enable inclusive, accessible outdoor enjoyment
  6. Give back and do good for the community
  7. Grow a wide range of edible perennials
  8. Help sequester tonnes of CO2
  9. Create sustainable community assets
  10. Provide places of peace and tranquillity

Activities

The Forest of Hearts is on a quest for wellbeing through purposeful outdoor projects for people and planet to prosper: Our social purpose relates to three main areas:

  1. Improving the Environment
  2. Improving Education
  3. Improving Health and Wellbeing

We currently employ three part time project workers and have a regular group of around 20 volunteers. We  run twelve projects which include:

Green Therapy - We are piloting a project of Social Prescribing to enable 40 people to improve their health and well-being through art or gardening. We are also working with health and social care professionals to develop their experience of outdoor activity to promote well-being. We intend to develop our projects with more staff and a  robust infrastructure to ensure sustainability.

Harvest Share - where we manage a team who pick and distribute fruit from the local area to 15 local care homes, nursing homes, charities and nurseries with around 500 beneficiaries at organisations including Springfield Mind, The Children's Centre, Cedar Lodge Nursing Home, The Methodist Church.

Beeline - we have set up an apiary with 4 hives and are creating a bee friendly garden area to provide classes and talks beekeeping and the role of bees in the environment. We are working with Men's Shed, two local Beekeeping Associations, our beekeeper and our apprentice.

Honey Bee Wood - We are creating a new five acre woodland with a team of volunteers and working with local groups including the Where Next Project, Avon Support, Springfield Mind and Stratford Parkinson's in order to create a Green Gym.

Stratford upon Avon Forest Garden - we are creating an accessible teaching area working with corporate sponsors and are in the early stages of creating a new 5 acre forest garden working with corporate volunteers. This will then be used by members of the community as a free to enter space to enjoy. We have a small barn that is being renovated by local companies and we will hire out this space in the future.

No current opportunities

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