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Glen Bridge Garden
Centre
Garden Centre Mission
Statement:
“Helping people to grow”
“We
aim to facilitate social integration while learning life and core skills
through horticulture in a safe, caring, supportive environment nurturing
choice, happiness and personal development to each service user’s
fullest potential”
Nursery Mission
Statement:
“At
Glen Bridge nursery we promote the
physical and psychological benefits of horticulture. Through the nurturing
of plants we gain an understanding of life processes and sustainability.
This is achieved in a caring and supportive environment”
Glen
Bridge Garden Centre is situated
in the heart of St. Joseph’s
Foundation Baker’s Road, Charleville, Co. Cork.
It is a horticultural unit consisting of a garden centre open to the
public, a nursery, Sensory
Garden, organic
vegetable garden and a maintenance team.
Service
users partake in occupational work based training in all aspects of the
garden centre. The driving principle from the beginning has been the
interaction and communication between people who come into the unit.
The sharing of gardening activities is a way for this to take
place. The unit encourages all levels of participation by all who
attend.
Both
full time and part time service users attend the unit to experience
horticultural occupational work based training, equipping service users with skills which can be
potentially used in mainstream employment.
The
unit is open to the public Monday to Friday all year round (except Easter and
Christmas week) to facilitate social integration with customers. The garden
centre is fully functional allowing service users to partake in a variety
of skills from office work, plant and stock maintenance to involvement in
the running of the shop. Service users learn a variety of life and core
skills through horticulture in a fully functional but less restrictive
employment setting.
Support
is given continually to enhance service users to progress at their own pace
“Personal support system” and enjoy a quality life experience.
“Contact with plants and nature and light physical activity have
proven health benefits”.
Sensory and
Organic Vegetable Gardens
There
are also Sensory and Organic Vegetable gardens planted parallel to the
garden centre. These gardens provide a tranquil area for the foundation and
a wealth of therapeutic sensory experiences.
The
Organic vegetable garden provides an opportunity for service users to
experience growing, maintaining and harvesting fruit and vegetables through
work based training.
The Nursery
The
Nursery supplies a stock of bedding plants, house plants and shrubs for
sale in the garden centre. Most of these plants are grown from seeds or
cuttings where the service users partake in the many processes involved in
getting the plant from “seed to point of sale”.
Maintenance team
A
horticultural maintenance team looks after the various properties of St Joseph’s
Foundation. This enables service users to benefit from social interaction
outside the main campus while enjoying the benefits of occupational
horticultural work based training i.e. grass cutting, pruning, weeding etc.
Contact: Supervisor, Garden Centre,
9am to 4.30pm (Monday to
Friday)on 063-21684
(Closed for lunch 1pm to 2pm).
or E-mail: garden@stjosephsfoundation.ie
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