Celebrating Corporate Volunteers

Huge gratitude to the Finance Team from St. Austell Brewery, who took part in a team-building corporate volunteer day last Thursday.

We had over 30 volunteers who achieved a massive amount on the site that was the National Dahlia Collection up until last October.

The Team quickly got to work weeding all the beds & cutting the edges back in. Some of the weed supressing covers were removed and then beds were planted up.

Many hands make light work!! And we had a LOT of hands!

The Team quickly got to grips with removing weeds, edging beds planting potatoes and then planting dahlias & other perennials and annuals for cut flowers later in the season.

Being a finance and accounting team, there was a lot of budget control going on with the potatoes which were laid out ahead of planting to ensure we calculated just the right amount for each row and could work out just how far our seed potatoes would stretch before we needed to prep the next row!

We had a full-on mulching session where we had 3-4 barrow fillers, 10 barrows and at least another 10 people raking out the mulch - check out the stop motion video below!

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/0c7e6b_74bfb7b433df4ed8bdaf2fad8742cdec/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Stop motion top mulching team!!

...and then it was done - All beds that needed mulching were mulched and it looks soooo neat and tidy!

Completed Work on the beds - all mulched and rabbit-proofed.

Trainee-in-employment, Toby with the help of trainee Kieran prepped and laid out all the chicken wire fencing to keep the rabbits out. (Thanks go to Toby for his DJing skills too... He kept us motivated with uplifting tunes!)

Countryside Skills Learners and their Coordinator, Tamsin, meet the St. Austell Brewery volunteers.

After lunch, the team went up to our newly refurbished hide and pond decking area to meet our Countryside Skills Coordinator, Tamsin & her Learner work experience team. The work here was funded by St. Austell Brewery grants programme. This paid for the hard landscaping as well as important equipment to help us monitor wildlife in this area. This was paired with funding from Farming in Protected Landscapes that enabled us to get pond-dipping equipment, a moth trap, bat detector and more. Thank you!

Would you like to come and support Kehelland by organising a Corporate Team Building / Volunteering Day?

Please email Growth Manager, Sally Pyner on hort@kehellandtrust.org.uk for more details.