Senior directors from across the H&H Group have rolled up their sleeves at the North West’s pioneering horticultural mental health charity.
When staff across the H&H Group of companies voted in April to support mental health charity Growing Well as their regional fundraising beneficiary for the year, the group’s senior directors pledged to use their free charity day to help with the gardening at one of the charity’s three pioneering horticultural centres – in the South Lakes, Tebay and Egremont.
The Group’s operations board took their gardening experience, or lack of it, into the vegetable gardens at the Growing Well centre at Low Sizergh, near Kendal.
Founded as a social enterprise in 2004, Growing Well has helped thousands of people across Cumbria and north Lancashire to benefit from therapeutic horticultural activities, helping to produce organic fruit and vegetables.
The H&H directors who dedicated their day to planting vegetables at the Kendal centre included H&H Group chief executive Richard Rankin, H&H Land & Estates MD Mark Johnson, Harrison & Hetherington MD Scott Donaldson, Paul Graham H&H Insurance Brokers MD and Roger Blake, the group’s financial controller.
Richard said: “We all embraced the experience of spending the day with Growing Well. Anyone who enjoys gardening will understand the therapeutic benefits of growing things, and Growing Well is giving hundreds of people with mental health problems a unique opportunity to experience the healing power of nature, working in the beautiful environment of their gardens and poly tunnels.
“H&H Group is rooted in the rural communities of the North West, and this was a great chance to do some team building, while doing something fulfilling and genuinely beneficial.
“There’s nothing like working the land and getting your hands dirty to create that sense of achievement and satisfaction, and the entire team got to experience what the charity does for the community, creating space to think and talk, enjoying both a mental and physical workout and at the same time adding value to the land and the local communities who benefit from the food they produce.
“It was a remarkable day, and all of us will be encouraging our people to take the earliest opportunity to experience it for themselves.”
