An amazing team of eight volunteers from Sophos helped to transform one of the gardens at Prior's Court, turning it from a weed infested space to a sensory paradise. 

The team tackled our Courthouse garden, a sensory space designed for the autistic young people with complex needs we support to relax. The beds are filled with rosemary, lavender, lemongrass, and other plants that the young people can smell and touch. Unfortunately, due to the rainy and sunny weather we have been having, these plants had been virtually taken over by weeds. 

Sophos worked their socks off in damp and rainy weather to remove all of these weeds and get the beds back to their former glory. They even filled the cracks in the patio in with sand to prevent the weeds coming back in the future. 

Some very skilled topiarists also neatened up the hedges growing at the front of the Courthouse, and those growing in the garden itself. One in particular had a rose growing through it which, while beautiful, had to be cut down as the prickles could have been a danger to our young people. 

Several different types of grasses had been grown by our young people in horticulture lessons, which were then used to fill up a number of planters lining our main driveway. These will  not only look nice when they are grown, but will offer our young people an additional sensory feature.

This is what the garden looked like before...

And this is what it looked like after everything had been cleared - look at the difference they have made! A huge thank you to everyone who helped make this space beautiful again.