Bags of Help funding initiative

Tesco has teamed up with Groundwork to launch its Bags of Help initiative across England and Wales. The scheme will see three community groups and projects awarded grants of £12,000, £10,000 and £8,000 – all raised from the 5p bag charge. Bags of Help offers community groups and projects in each of Tesco’s 390 regions across the UK a share of revenue generated from the five pence charge levied on single-use carrier bags.

The public will now vote in store at a local Tesco from 27 February until 6 March 2016 on who should receive the £12,000, £10,000 and £8,000 awards.

We'd love your support to build The Recovery Labyrinth Project, so please vote for us to receive a generous £ award!

The more more we receive, the more workshops we are able to deliver and the more members of our local community can get involved.

Remember to tell everyone on social media that you've supported us and include the hashtag #BagsofHelp.


Thank you!

Sunflower labyrinth!

view across the site to the houses opposite

Our group has been growing sunflowers for the past few months to create a temporal sunflower labyrinth. Our c. 14 x 15ft plot is now circled by a ring of colourful flowers. We're into the 2nd week of July and we've got lots of different varieties coming into flower, and they look great!

As you can see from the photos, our labyrinth site sits within a much larger space. This is the previously over-grown and gone-wild part of Community Roots. Eventually, situated across from our labyrinth, Green Light Trust and Community Roots/Great Yarmouth & Waveney Mind are developing a 'Patch Project' (mini-allotments for local people) and an orchard of local fruit varieties over the next few years.

view across the site towards the River Yare and Great Yarmouth

The idea behind the sunflower labyrinth is that we gradually introduce various temporary labyrinth-inspired ideas into the space, as a way of preparing the land and inspiring ideas from our group of local people. So, thank you to everyone who has grown, sown, tended and watered the sunflowers - we still have space for a few more if anyone has some still to be planted...

lots of different sunflower varieties growing

What a busy day yesterday at Community Roots, we had gardening, willow weaving, mammoth making and Daniel and myself started marking out the first circle for our labyrinth.
The site is magical and a lot of work has already been done on the patch project by Wild Haven participants who are also members of Hands on HeArt and the Community Roots gardening groups.
Our labyrinth site is wild and natural, with many beautiful plants, trees, animals, birds and insects. We've had foxes, muntjac deer, magpies (my personal favourites), crows, bees, families of frogs just to name a few!
Brian Howard kindly donated a Huge bucket of sunflowers, so Daniel and myself started to dig a trench to accommodate them. The soil is rich, clay and very damp with many perennial weeds such as Horsetail which is abundant down my own allotment. Apparently the Romans used it for cleaning pans, it is rich in silica and can be used medicinally, so even pesky weeds have their uses! Mother Nature provides even panscourers!
The bees seemed really interested in our newly dug trench and when we investigated further it seemed that they were taking mouth fulls of newly dug soil back to their hives. Most interesting....
More news to follow soon.........

Coming soon!

Clearing the land

Sunken bathtub being dug out of the patch...

Lots of waste being cleared

Rusty patterns - rust dying workshop?

View from the far end of the site looking East

View of the site looking West