RAF Community Garden
The Phoenix Garden
We donated our Blue Slate Rockery and some paving to a community garden called the Phoenix Garden. Designed as a garden of reflection, it was created by The Royal Airforce Cosford Chaplaincy. Therefore all service personnel, their families and Veterans living in the Shropshire area were invited to enjoy the garden.
The project
The garden was funded entirely by charitable donations and created as a joint venture between trainees at the station and inmates of HMP Kirklevington Grange.
We were contacted and asked to doate some of our products to the garde. For this we supplied our Blue Slate rockery to create the centerpiece which consisted of two Cairns built by the trainees.
The Cairns
Our Blue Slate Rockery was considered the perfect product to create the cairns. They are designed to provide a point of remembrance and reflection.
Cairn with cross inside 
A cairn made from Blue Slate Rockery
Paving
Additionally three patio areas are located in each corner of the garden and each one features a bench for people to sit on and reflect. Our Canterbury patio kits were identified as the ideal product to create these areas. Therefore the chaplaincy requested patio packs in the Mellow Amber, Old Cotswold and Pale Ochre colour tones. This was to ensure the patios were large enough and to give each area its own identity.
Paved seating area 
Paving in the community garden
We received a lovely letter from the Station Chaplain thanking us for providing the hard landscaping for their community garden.
Letter of thanks from the RAF 
Seating area near to Cairn
The garden was officially opened on the 21st September and over 100 people were in attendance. The garden has numerous different areas focused on sacrifice, calm, creation, peace, reconciliation, prayer and commemoration and on the first day of opening the garden had 20 people using it for a variety of purposes. This ranged from someone in the quiet contemplation to a breakout area during a Cruse Bereavement and Loss course.
