Community Gardening Group Volunteers

St Johns Winchester is looking for keen gardening volunteers to assist and support our residents who want to get involved with day-to-day gardening within our beautiful historic grounds. 

At St John’s we have contractors to maintain the lawns, hedges and pathways so we are looking for volunteers to support our residents with smaller tasks which fall outside of the contractor’s responsibilities.

Examples of activities could include:-

• Supporting residents through sharing of garden/plant knowledge
• Dead heading
• Weeding
• Edging
• Greenhouse planting and potting on seedlings and taking cuttings
• Watering in the summer and considering how we can save water
• Mulching boarders
• Pot care and repotting balcony pots and planters on occasion
• Taking part in seasonal activities using materials from the garden e.g. wreath making

Proposed volunteer activity timings: -

• Gardening duties – ideally 4-8 hours per week (Monday-Friday) (Flexibility is possible)
• Optional attendance at resident gardening group meetings - approx. 3 times/year

We hope to recruit 2-3 volunteers. The number of hours per week will vary depending on the time of year, project stage, the weather, the number of volunteers and their availability.

This is a new project and so will take time to develop.

Skills

• A good general knowledge of plants and gardening activities 
• Have ideas and enthusiasm
• Friendly and a good listener
• Reliable/dependable
• Trustworthy
• Comfortable chatting to almshouse residents and able to support those that are less mobile
• Good sense of humour
• Happy to learn
•  A DBS check (at our expense) and two references are required for any St John’s volunteers

All St John’s volunteers must be 18 or over due to insurance requirements.