Green Synergy

Aug 13, 2024

Everyone is Welcome at Green Synergy

We recently had the pleasure of a guided tour of Green Synergy a wonderful green space in the heart of Lincoln.
Ali took us on an insightful tour of the beautiful garden that proves to be a valuable part of the community. The Lincolnshire Sleep Hub look forward to working closely with Ali and the team at Green Synergy in the future.

Over to Ali…
Green Synergy is a well-respected Lincoln based gardening and horticulture charity established in 2013 that supports people to socialise, learn and thrive. Our vision is creating healthier and caring communities connecting nature, people and plants and our mission is to inspire, enable and empower people in Greater Lincolnshire to meet, grow, learn and thrive through community gardening and connecting with nature. Our charity currently manages two community gardens, Hillside Garden and Ellie’s Memorial Garden, developing outreach urban gardening and our work supports people of all ages in the most under-served communities in Lincolnshire to improve their mental and physical wellbeing. The ward where we are based is in the bottom 25% of all neighbourhoods in England and its health deprivation is very acute being in the worst 18% in England. We support our local communities and they support us.

Our programmes, projects and activities focus on delivering community gardening and therapeutic horticulture programmes to support people in the most under-served and deprived communities in Lincolnshire to improve their mental and physical wellbeing whilst managing the green spaces in environmentally responsible ways. We offer garden design and build services supporting local communities to develop green spaces into new community garden in a sustainable and responsible manner. We were honoured as a charity to have been awarded in 2023 and 2024 the Best Gardening and Horticulture Charity- East Midlands in the Non-Profit Organisation Awards.

Green Synergy is so much more than a gardening charity with volunteering, older people warm and cool spaces activities and community engagement events to bring people together in our community gardens and spaces and to support people living in Lincolnshire to improve their mental health and wellbeing.  Green Synergy enables people to learn skills for life, for work and encourages people to care for themselves, each other and the environment whilst bringing communities together to create more life chances, quality green spaces and re-connect people to green spaces, growing and nature connectedness.

The charity delivers a range of projects for children, young people, families and adults.

Our Tower Power project is funded by BBC Children in Need to enable children and young people to come together, have fun, build friendships, their confidence and connect with nature. The sessions run after school and during school holidays. Our Green Explorers  programme is part of the Holidays, Activity and Food (HAF) programme providing fun nature-based activities during the school holidays.

Green Synergy also delivers a range of adult mental health and wellbeing programmes and activities to support individuals to improve their wellness. This includes Better Together which is delivered every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon and aims to improve participant’s health and wellbeing, improve their skills and confidence, get motivated, build self-esteem and achieve goals and find their sense of purpose.

A number of participants have shared the difference you work makes and we are honoured to share them here:

“Coming to Green Synergy has changed my life, I had not been out for 10 years and I now have the amigos for life” (TL)

“When I come here, I don’t feel judged – I can be myself and I want to do more of that” (AT)

“This is a safe space and gives me hope” (AW)

Our Green WRAP (Wellbeing Recovery Action Planning) project aims to support people experiencing mental health issues and to enable and empower them to improve their mental health and wellbeing through gardening, therapeutic horticulture and wellness activities through self-care.

Our Green Shoots of Wellness II project aims to support men aged 18+ living in Lincoln and Lincolnshire and in particular living in the most under-served communities in Lincoln who are dealing with mental health issues and people with physical long-term conditions and disabilities and their carers.

The Layers of Green project programme is for adults aged 18-30 years old experiencing mental health challenges, the project will be providing a layer of support, nature connectiveness and physical activities to improve your mental health, wellbeing, build confidence and resilience through the 5 ways to wellbeing.

In addition to delivering children, young people, families and adult programmes, Green Synergy also delivers a wide range of community engagement activities and events which is supported by the National Lottery Community Fund. Our See How Our Garden Grows project aims to strengthen Green Synergy as a charity by building our organisational development through work streams on governance development, policies and procedures reviews, income, resilience and organisational sustainability as a charity. The project is enabling the charity to increase our capacity for managing and coordinating events, activities and projects to increase reach and also aims to increase community cohesion, support under-served communities, reduce isolation and improve people’s mental and physical health.

In 22/23, The See How our Garden Grows project reached 1186 people through our garden events and 286 people through our Warm Spaces and coffee morning activities and 91 people through our Knit and Natter programme. The charity hosted 73 adults on specific garden visits and the team undertook 40 community engagement activities and events reaching 1487 people. Green Synergy’s social media presence has grown and the charity reached over 19,000 on Twitter and 112,631 of Facebook as well as creating a new website which is now well visited.

Our charity could not do what we do without the amazing support, assistance and contributions by our volunteers and we are really proud that they supported us with 3709 volunteering hours last year. We also run corporate volunteering days for groups from companies and organisations to join us for a day on the gardens to volunteer and spend some time connecting with nature. If you are interested in joining us please email info@greensynergy.org.uk

To find out more and get involved visit www.greensynergy.org.uk