Volunteer Gardener - Young Onset Dementia Group

Main Duties of the Job

• Bring people together to improve their health and wellbeing
• Improve the aesthetics of the sensory garden
• Be creative in providing a calm and relaxing space within the sensory garden
• Co produce with service users and the local community
• Improve biodiversity through plant diversity
• Provide good quality habitat for wildlife
• Allow nature to be therapeutic
• Increase the quality of access to nature
• Reduce harmful practice in daily practice to limit the loss to our ecosystems

Key Tasks and Responsibilities

• Maintain planted areas, with regular watering, weeding, mulching etc.
• Support improvements to the sensory garden
• Create wildlife habitats, such as insect hotels, bird boxes
• Monitor butterflies, pollinators, plants and other wildlife
• Work alongside and support volunteer gardener at Memorial Hospital site
• Work with small groups of service users as garden buddies
• Share knowledge and experience with garden buddies
• Encourage participation of garden buddies
• Maintain and monitor the upkeep of any tools and materials
• Report any concerns or issues about garden buddies to named employee for Oxleas NHS Trust at that time
• Report any concerns or issues about the garden or materials to the Sustainability Manager

When working with Oxleas Service Users: Responsibility for the group (or any service user working with the volunteer) will lie with a named employee of Oxleas NHS Trust. Someone employed by the Trust will be with the group (or individual) throughout any activity.

Person Specification Knowledge

• Knowledge of gardening, plants, wildlife

Skills

• Extremely patient, kind & caring and able to adapt to change at the last minute

Care

• Care of the environment and the wildlife habitat

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.