Dobbies announces Helping Your Community Grow shortlist

Voting now opens for Swansea residents

Dobbies, the UK’s leading garden centre, is helping one community project brighten up their green space in Swansea with its Helping Your Community Grow initiative.

This spring, Dobbies’ Swansea store is supporting a sustainable project through its popular initiative. In recent months, community projects in Swansea were invited to nominate themselves for support and now a shortlist has been selected by local team members. People in Swansea now have the chance to vote for their favourite project.

The winning project in Swansea will then receive advice, products and support from their local Dobbies’ team. Sustainable products, such as peat-free compost and recycled pots, will be use wherever possible.

Silver Lining Care is a therapeutic children’s residential home, offering a wide range of restorative activities and day-to-day support. The residential home is hoping to use Dobbies’ support to transform its back garden into a vegetable patch, plant up some flowers and shrubs, and improve the overall look and feel of the garden.

Primrose Hill Community Garden has brought locals together to transform and enjoy a small patch of forgotten space, which has become a big attraction to local wildlife. Sustainability is at the heart of this community garden, where the team have been collecting rainwater for the plants and using natural products as fertiliser. The group is looking for Dobbies’ support in supplying tools and storage equipment for everyone to use.

Cwmafan Community Orchard operates a sustainable space where residents of all ages or abilities can come together and get involved in helping this green space bloom. If successful, Dobbies’ help would provide sustainable products such as peat-free compost, in addition to essential trees, tree stakes and guards to help this project flourish.

Dobbies’ CEO, Graeme Jenkins, said: “Helping Your Community Grow is a really popular initiative in Swansea and we’ve seen a great response from community groups and projects looking to make a difference to their local area. It’s been positive to see so many projects place importance on sustainability and environmentally-friendly products.

“Now the community voting gets underway and we’re looking forward to seeing which projects receive our support.”

In addition to the Swansea winner, the project which receives the most votes across the UK will win the national Helping Your Community Grow title, gaining additional support from Dobbies to deliver their project.

There will be further opportunities for community groups looking to brighten up their local areas. Community groups are invited to contact their local store for details of the community initiatives available on a case-by-case basis.

Voting will remain open until 16 May. For more information on how to register your vote, visit Helping Your Community Grow | Dobbies Garden Centres.