MELKSHAM Town Council is pressing ahead with plans to promote a ‘garden sharing scheme’.
Local residents interested in the scheme will be signposted by the town council to ‘Lend and Tend’ – an organisation that aims to “save unloved gardens with garden sharing”.
The scheme will bring together residents that are struggling to maintain their gardens with residents that are keen to get gardening but have no access to one.
There was some recent confusion amongst town councillors that the scheme was a new one, based on the Lend and Tend scheme, to be run by the town council, causing concern about what the council’s safeguarding responsibilities would be.
However, at a town council meeting last week, mayor cllr Jon Hubbard clarified that the scheme was “nothing to do with Melksham Town Council” and that it would simply be promoting the scheme, with safeguarding responsibilities falling to Lend and Tend.
In a report to councillors, the town council’s community development officer, Miriam Zaccarelli, explained that she had discussed Lend and Tend’s safeguarding process with the founder of the scheme, Joyce Veheary.
“Joyce explained that when a person offers their garden through the Lend and Tend system, she personally matches them to someone local who would like use of a garden,” explains the community development officer in her report. “An initial meeting is set up on Zoom, so that both people can ‘meet’ and decide whether the relationship is suitable. This relationship is established on trust, and after the match has been made, the two people arrange the details between themselves to set up the garden sharing.”
Promotion of the scheme will be launched in the coming weeks by the town council. Anyone interested in taking part can email Miriam at the town council: MiriamZaccarelli@melksham-tc.gov.uk
