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

• 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.

• Knowledge of gardening, plants, wildlife

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

• Care of the environment and the wildlife habitat

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.