Various flowering plants in containers and garden beds outside a greenhouse polytunnel.

Growing Sudley Walled Garden

A 13-year engagement journey with the social enterprise

Growing Sudley CIC is a social enterprise that provides health and well-being through nature. HSA have been working with Growing Sudley for over 12 years, helping to establish the social enterprise and delivering pilot projects such as forest schools, holiday clubs and funded sessions for vulnerable adults.

From initial public consultations with residents and park users, projects were piloted to trial different activities in the garden, testing spatially and environmentally how they worked and helping to shape a more permanent brief for the long-term vision. This included how the garden would function, and also how it would be maintained. We used a range of methods to engage the widest demographic to contribute to the co-design, explaining the various constraints that come with limited funding and working out ways to overcome them together. Harrison Stringfellow assisted in developing a website and social media presence to facilitate public engagement and discussion around the Sudley site during its early development.

Aerial view of a park with garden plots, green spaces, and walking paths. People gather near a cluster of green tents, and multiple cars are parked along a nearby road. Play equipment and picnic spots are visible on a grassy area.
Outdoor garden display with three people and a child holding a pinwheel, educational posters, and plants.

Aerial photograph of March 25 Community open day

Wooden boardwalk surrounded by lush greenery and trees under a clear blue sky.

Early public consultations in the walled garden

Timeline infographic detailing the development of a community garden from 2012 to 2025, highlighting milestones like the establishment of a Walled Garden Group, therapeutic sessions, pre-school sessions, volunteer gardening, and infrastructure improvements. Features include activities, projects, community involvement, and garden refurbishments over the years.

Images of the garden transformed

People walking on a wooden pathway surrounded by greenery.

Timeline of HSA X Growing Sudley

A black post with handwritten instructions in pink and white chalk, wrapped with a yellowish rope and surrounded by greenery.

Accessible walkways created

A sunny garden with raised flower beds and trees, some purple flowering plants, and a dirt path.

11,000+ People Engaged

52,000+ Participant Hours

Collages were produced to visually represent many of the ideas the community had for the space: from allotments to star gazing to a viewing tower that would take in the fabulous vistas of the city, the Mersey and the Welsh hills beyond. A public consultation and questionnaire circulated to residents and park users showed some kind of horticulture project as being the most popular use of the walled garden by far.

During Spring-Autumn 2017-2020, we ran 4 years of pilot projects. These consisted of regular gardening and outdoor sessions with adults with disabilities and health conditions, and outdoor holiday clubs for local school children. The holiday club grew in popularity, is now in its 8th year and sells out quickly. Some of the children who attended the first sessions are now volunteering for their Duke of Edinburgh Awards.

The pilot projects at Growing Sudley played a pivotal role in holistically developing a vision for the garden and wider organisation. These early initiatives continued to grow community involvement at a grassroots level and provided invaluable insight into what makes a truly functional, inclusive outdoor play and therapy space. Community ideas and feedback were directly woven into the final garden design developed with Howard Miller.

To Jan 2025

Collage of a community garden concept with sections labeled for nature nursery, physic garden, temporary events structure, rainwater harvesting, and sustainability. Features images of people gardening, plants, a forest school, and text about growing produce, horticultural therapy, historical connections, herb garden usage, and forest skills education.
Group of children and adults gathered outdoors at a table, participating community engagment or outdoor workshop, with lush green trees in the background.

College of community ideas

Flyer for Forest School Easter Holiday program at Sudley House Walled Garden, Mossley Hill Road. Features illustrations of trees and a bird, with program details including dates, activities like shelter making and woodland games, location, and contact information.
An elderly woman sitting on a chair outdoors, laughing she cuts a wooden plank with a handsaw. They are surrounded by greenery and additional wooden planks.

Forest School Flyer

Group of children and adults gathered outdoors around a small campfire, some sitting on tree stumps and others standing, with a white canopy, greenery, and a brick wall in the background.

HSA worked with Howard Miller Design, taking the developed garden brief from the many engagement sessions to create a flexible, biodiverse and accessible space on a limited budget that could evolve over time.

The design enables the many different uses that have developed in the garden to coexist, with landscaping and paths forming natural shapes that define these zones of the garden, whilst also making it more accessible to wheelchairs, scooters and people with mobility issues.

The garden has been zoned into 3 main areas: the woodland area, with coppiced hazels and fire circle, foraging edges and an accessible boardwalk so everyone can get into the woods; the garden area, with woven willow raised beds for therapeutic horticulture(set at different heights to aid different users) and growing healing herbs and flowers; and the meadow, surrounded by wildflowers and providing a space for qigong and yoga, as well as picnics and community events. 

Through developing the business plan for Growing Sudley, HSA designed the conversion of the adjacent derelict Changing Rooms building into an income generator for the garden through a mixture of paid activity, events and rental income. 

Read more about the Changing Room sustainable retrofit here.

Pilot Projects

Pilot Projects

A detailed layout of a garden with labeled zones, including a garden zone, woodland zone, meadow zone, and a central area with a stable block, Sudley house, and changing rooms. The garden features a hedged enclosure connecting these zones, with pathways and trees throughout.
People gathered at outdoor market stalls with green canopies on a sunny day, surrounded by trees.

Shortlisted for The Pineapples 2025 Awards for Community Engagement

Group of people sitting around a table inside a greenhouse, engaged in a meeting or discussion, with various papers and cups on the table.
A series of photographs hanging on a clothesline with clothespins outdoors, with a sign in the foreground that reads, 'What will it look like?' in black text on a white background.

Pilot Projects and Engagement Sessions

Two people, a man and a woman, picking a sunflower in a garden filled with various flowers and plants.

Related Projects

People working on a construction project installing hempcrete on a brick building, with buckets and construction materials on the ground.

The Changing Rooms, Growing Sudley

Community sustainable retrofit of derelict building

A large group of people gathered outdoors in a garden or park during daylight, with some sitting and others standing, surrounded by trees and shrubs, with tents and a greenhouse in the background.

Growing Sudley Community Day

Community engagement day

Illustration of the front of a brick building with large windows and a yellow sign reading 'BRONTE' on top. There are people walking outside, including a woman with a bicycle, a group of children, and a person pushing a stroller. Inside the windows, people are seated at tables.

The Bronte

A sustainable future for a youth centre