The Eco Therapy Garden in Knowsley is on the road to recovery after it was vandalised late last year.
Garden area [Photo credit: Jade Jones BAJ 2026]In November the community-led wellbeing garden was broken into twice and was raided. Children’s toys were stolen and set on fire, the polytunnels had been ripped and the greenhouse smashed, the shed was destroyed, trees planted by volunteers had been ripped out of the ground and much more of the green space had been wrecked. This all resulted in over £10,000 worth of damage.
Angela Davies the founder of the garden said: “We are community led and everyone works very hard on the garden, what hours they can, and they were absolutely heartbroken and devastated that all the hard work had just been ruined.”
Since then, volunteers have been working to revive the garden, so it is a sanctuary for the community once again. The first steps for the team were to clean everything up so they can rebuild what was broken and stolen.
One difficulty is that there is no electricity at the site so now it is hard to install security cameras. Until then the more expensive things like the polytunnels and shed cannot be replaced at the risk they will be damaged again.
A GoFundMe for the garden has raised £4,000 and it has secured three years of National Lottery funding so these will be replaced in due time.
In the meantime, local companies have been helping to restore the space. Local food company ‘Jacky Mundos’ donated hundreds of pounds worth of toys, scooters, slides and other activities. Within a fortnight of the vandalism, usual activities and events were back in attendance and after a break for Christmas they are about to resume.
Martin Drury is the operations and development manager. He joined as a volunteer for around five years and now works for the project full time.
He said: “It’s always a revolving thing with ecotherapy garden really. We have set sessions we do throughout the year. So that may be our composting program, our grow your own food works, learning about nature and biodiversity, but there’ll be more topical items throughout the year.”
Sheltered area in the garden. [photo credit:Jade Jones BAJ 2026]Mr Drury added: “And then of course we will be extending our opening hours in 2026 as well. We’ve got some lottery funding for three years, which means we’ll be able to extend our offerings. We will be opening four days a week initially, hopefully starting in spring and to be make the garden more accessible to the wider community and more and more people.”
Other projects will be entering the new year like a four-week programme by ‘Roots & Rays Mama’ which aims to assist new mothers in the area who may be struggling.
The garden has also undergone a ‘soft rebrand’ with a new website and new signage to welcome the new year.
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