Role summary
The hospice is set in a 24-acre estate, of which 4 acres are gardens. The grounds are taken care of by a small number of volunteers and they form a fundamental part of the hospice facilities that our children and families can enjoy. Volunteers also assist with our corporate gardening days.
Core responsibilities
The primary tasks include:
- Your role will be to assist in all aspects of gardening including weeding, planting bulbs, herbaceous plants, and shrubs; pruning; edging lawns; digging/forking over soil and adding compost as required; sweeping up and general tidying , including the paved areas, driveway and car parks.
- Tools and equipment are to be cleaned as necessary and returned to their designated area when tasks are completed or at the end of the day.
- Volunteers will not be asked to use power tools unless specifically qualified and authorised to do so.
- Appropriate disposal of garden waste in the designated areas.
- To water plants - especially hanging baskets and boxes (water hose connections are situated around the building)
- To bring any construction / maintenance issues to the attention of the Facilities Manager.
- From time to time, to assist the facilities team with tasks where extra pairs of hands are needed, such as receiving deliveries, laying paths etc.
- Work alongside some of the corporate teams that garden for us on one off days. These normally take place on a Tuesday or Thursday from 9am – 4pm.
If you love being outside and working within nature and beautiful surroundingd , you will love our gardening at Haven House. The grounds are so peaceful and you can immersive yourself in the role while knowing you are making sure that our grounds look beautiful to the families that are using them. We also make sure you are well stocked up with tea and biscuits.
You will learn about the work of Haven House Children's Hospice and how we support children and families. There is no specific training given for this role in gardening skills, we ask that you do enjoy gardening to a hobby level or have an interest in working outdoors when choosing to apply for this role. You will be able to shadow our experienced volunteer gardeners to learn about how they take care of the grounds and be ablet to pick up basic skills about maintaing a large area of gardens.
Although there are no specific skills and qualifications for the role it would help if:
- You enjoy working with people
- Able to use initiative, and take direction as part of a garden team
- Have an interest in gardening or out door work. We do not train specifically in gardening skills for thsi role. We do however give you a basic induction in to Haven House an dthe role. You will also get teh chance to shadow one of our experienced gardeners until you feel confident in working on your own tasks.
- We view the safeguarding of Haven House Children to be of paramount importance and so a DBS check will be performed prior to commencement in post
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