Volunteering at Meadow Orchard

1. About Volunteering
2. Some activities you can help with
3. Volunteer Site Leaders
4. Site leading responsibilities
5. Site Leader Induction

About Volunteering

There are many activities that you can help with across our garden, orchard, wildlife areas, buildings, maintenance or site features. Everyone is welcome, whatever your experience or interests. Children under age 16 must be accompanied by an adult.

We aim to have a Site Leader on hand at our volunteer open days to guide activities. Please go at your own pace, do what you are comfortable with and ask for help or guidance as needed.

Some activities you can help with

• Maintaining the garden, growing food, flowers, culinary and medicinal herbs in our veg beds, perennial beds and polytunnel
• Caring for the wildlife areas and enhancing habitats, such as scything, planting trees, making bird or bat boxes, coppicing and pollarding trees, transplanting saplings, planting out wild flowers, clearing overgrown bramble.
• Caring for the fruit trees in our community orchard
• Eco-building and carpentry or repairs
• Green woodworking
• Natural bee-keeping
• General site upkeep

Volunteer Site Leaders

Volunteer site leaders help to run our regular Saturday open days from 12.00pm -4.00pm. We always need site leaders to ensure we can remain open to the public every week. You can commit to however many Saturdays you like. We suggest a minimum of 3-4 Saturdays a year so you can get the most from this volunteering role and build continuity and experience.

Site leading responsibilities

• committing to a Saturday open day or half day slot (4 hours or 2 hours)
• opening and/or closing the site
• welcoming visitors and volunteers
• giving a brief induction to new volunteers
• guiding hands-on volunteer activities such as wildlife activities, gardening, site maintenance, tree-care and other practical projects
• supporting care of the site for the day, such as making sure rubbish is taken away, tools are put away, hand-washing water is available, the compost toilet is clean and the site is well cared for
• being responsible for health and safety on the day
• keeping a log of the day and reporting any issues or incidents

Site Leader Induction

An induction and guidance can be provided for new site leaders. You can also shadow other site leaders and we aim to always have two site leaders present at our open days. Download the guidelines for site leaders below to find out more: