Autumn 2023Silver for Petrus at Tatton

About the writer

Rachael Bennion is the service manager for Social Prescribing at Petrus which includes the community gardening projects at PIER and Petrus’ Nature For Health programme. Rachael is the design lead for Petrus’ RHS Tatton Park Flower Show garden entries.

Petrus Incredible Edibles Rochdale (PIER), is homelessness charity Petrus’ Community Allotment located on Belfield Road in Rochdale. It’s a beautiful, relaxing and therapeutic piece of land that grows fruit and vegetables and a member of the wider Incredible Edibles network, representing Rochdale. Their vision is to create kind, confident and connected communities through the power of food.

Every year, Petrus staff, service users and volunteers come together to design a garden to build for the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show. Our 2021 entry, Full Circle, was even featured on the cover of that year’s autumn issue of Real Rochdale, raising awareness of the impact flooding has had in the area, demonstrating what gardeners and the community can do to work with water and increase flood resilience.

We take part in the flower show to raise awareness of our charity and demonstrate the impact of the social prescribing work taking place at our community allotment PIER.

Through the activities we run at this special place, we help people break negative routines, find friendship, and build confidence.

We bring something quite unique to the Tatton Park Flower Show through our gardens, which are truly collaborative projects, bringing together the ideas of our staff, service users and volunteers.

Our gardens give us the opportunity to show what people can achieve when they are empowered, trusted, and believed in, challenging some of the negative stereotypes associated with homelessness and perceptions of what people who have experienced things like homelessness can do.

This year, we created ‘The Empowerment Garden,’ to highlight how community food-growing projects can empower people and communities. Part of the new ‘terraced garden’ category, the garden showed how small spaces can be both productive and attractive. Growing edible plants and creating pollinator-friendly spaces doesn’t have to come at the expense of an aesthetically pleasing and relaxing garden space!

After three weeks of hard work, in quite literally all weathers, we are proud to have secured a silver medal from the judges.

The validation and support from the judges and wider community that our service users experience throughout the show creates a powerful sense of belonging, helping them as they continue to overcome the challenges they face as a result of their experiences.

We can’t wait to return to the show for a fifth year in 2024. If you would like to find out how to be a part of this journey, please visit our website www.petrus.org.uk/tatton