Neighbours awarded grant to go online

Community garden gets connected thanks to community grant

The Betty Rushton Community Garden has added internet surfing to its list of activities, enabling visitors to the Abbey Hulton Estate to smell the roses and talk to relatives in cyberspace.

The Abbey Hulton Residents Association has taken advantage of a £1,530-grant from Affinity Sutton, which owns the estate, to buy three laptop computers for the garden-based classroom – which was built with another £30,000 from the housing group.

“We were very pleased to get this project started,” says the association’s chair, Christine Turner. “The world is changing, with lots of things now done online and many of our older residents are interested in taking computer lessons. We want a community place where everyone can go.“

“The world is changing, with lots of things now done online – and many older residents are interested in taking computer lessons”

The latest funding comes from Affinity Sutton’s £180,000 Community Grants Scheme, which offers £300 to £5,000 to charities and community organisations across England.

Since it opened three years ago, the garden has been a popular meeting point for all age groups, with schoolchildren, teachers and residents of the estate often growing fruit and vegetables there. Now residents have been given a vital link to the wider community after learning how to chat online with the relatives they can’t easily reach.

The association’s existing computer lessons are held in the upstairs room of its community house, near the garden, but it moved them to increase accessibility after having to turn away people who couldn’t make the climb.

Fortunately, the community garden classroom is fully accessible, meaning it can be reached by anyone who uses a wheelchair or has difficulty walking. “One lady who uses two sticks to walk wanted computer lessons, but couldn’t climb the stairs to reach the computers,” says Christine. “The computer supervisor also has difficulty with the stairs, so we decided to put the laptops in the garden so people in similar situations would be able to use them.

The garden classroom is used for other community events during the week, so only one end can be used for computer training, but there is a bigger plan to create a £50,000 one-storey building in the garden that will host more of the community’s events.

“The wooden hut we’re in now is too small,” says Christine. “We want to hold our computer lessons for adults on Thursday mornings and for juniors on Mondays and Fridays, but we’ve only got room for three people. The new place will have room for ten.”

The association already has planning permission for the building and will transfer the seven computers from the nearby community house to the garden once complete to further increase the community’s internet access.