In 2021, staff at Frome Medical Practice started the process of creating a staff wellbeing garden. The garden, which is visible from many of the public areas of the practice, was developed with support from the partners at the practice, the landlord of the Medical Centre, Assura, and The Walled Garden at Mells. In 2022, the garden has flourished, both as a quiet space for staff to take their breaks in and as a productive space for growing food and flowers.

Gareth Hannam, Digital, Data and Technology Manager at the practice, has been one of the leads on the development of the garden and said, "The area where the garden now stands was previously an area of plain turf, lacking in biodiversity and not used by any of us who work at the practice. We wanted to create something that helped us meet the core values of the practice and as the garden has continued to grow this year, we feel like we are now achieving this."

"The garden features a series of raised beds and a composting area. The raised beds are managed by volunteers from within the staff team at the practice, in their own time. Assura (who own the building) donated hot composters to us in 2022, meaning our food waste no longer needs to go to landfill and the team are now learning more about composting. Thanks to our colleagues at Loop:Frome for sharing their knowledge and experience of this aspect of gardening with us."

"And thanks to the generosity of the children, parents and staff at the Avanti Park School in Frome we've been able to install a bench in the garden too."

Dr Helen Kingston, Senior Partner at the Practice, said, "Our garden isn't just a space about growing. It's also a space about staff wellbeing. Working in primary care continues to be extremely challenging and the welfare of our team is incredibly important to us. The garden offers staff a quiet space to pause and enjoy occasional stress free moments in their busy, pressured days. This is just one aspect of our efforts to support and look after our team, so they are in the best place possible to look after our patients." 

Natali Jones is the First Contact Practitioner at the practice and one of the volunteers helping to look after the garden. Natali said, "The use of the garden not only provides me with peace and serenity at work but it has also been a source to be able to socialise with fellow gardeners. The well-being garden is always somewhere that I can go to check my flowers, do some weeding, grow seedlings and nurture my plants. These activities are so simple yet for me give me sometimes a much-needed bit of headspace and distraction from the stresses of life. Seeing flowers blooming or new insects buzzing around the garden allow me to re-connect with nature and evoke feeling of accomplishment and happiness for me."

The garden was recently awarded a Silver Medal by the Frome In Bloom judges and it was opened up to members of the public as part of the Great Big Green Week in Frome.

Gareth added, "We are all really pleased with the progress we've made on the garden in the last year or so and on how much we've already learned. We've plans to further develop the garden in the future, with ideas around informal staff education sessions on composting and gardening, garden tours, increasing the biodiversity of the garden through the introduction of a meadow area and the installation of patient information screens to share more information about the garden and to encourage conversations about the garden within our local community."