Frome Medical Practice has won the NHS Forest Award for Innovative Development of Green Space at Health Sites. The NHS Forest inspires and supports healthcare sites in transforming their green space for health, wellbeing and biodiversity and the award was announced at their annual conference in October.

Speaking about the awards, NHS Forest said, "Each year, we are inspired and impressed by the creativity shown by our NHS Forest sites, in using their green spaces and encouraging engagement with them. This year was no different."

Frome Medical Practice won the Innovation award following the development of a piece of unused land at the back of the practice building into a staff wellbeing garden. The garden not only provides a quiet space for staff to take breaks in, but is a productive space to grow food and flowers. The garden also means the practice has been able to reduce food waste being sent to landfill, as this is now composted, and there has been an increase in biodiversity around the site.

The NHS Forest team said, "Frome Medical Practice has demonstrated that even the smallest scale green space projects can make a big impact."

Gareth Hannam, Digital Transformation Lead and a driving force behind the garden said, "We are thrilled to have received the award. The team have worked hard to develop the garden and this has been rewarded in many ways this year. We've been growing our own food and reducing our impact on the environment by creating compost from our food waste."

"The staff wellbeing garden is managed by a group of staff who work on it voluntarily, in their spare time, for the benefit of the whole team. We've had fantastic support from a number of local organisations, including Loop:Frome, The Walled Garden at Mells, Sydenhams Hire Centre and the Avanti Park School, as well as from our landlords Assura, which we are grateful for. We are also grateful to the small group of volunteers who helped us shift soil in the early days of the garden! We are now looking forward to the next stage in the development of the garden, which will include more information for patients about the work we are doing and hopefully an even more successful growing and composting year in 2023."

You can find out more about the garden here.