Eden Project

Support community projects by recycling your old tools at Eden

We’ve just set up a collection point for broken and unwanted tools to provide schools and community gardens with free garden equipment.

The Tool Shed scheme will offer practical skills to prisoners at Dartmoor’s resettlement unit, who’ll learn to the refurbish hoes, spades, trowels and the like in special workshops before they’re distributed locally.

Run in association with The Conservation Foundation Tool Shed project and HMP Dartmoor, the scheme builds on previous annual ‘tool amnesties’ held at garden centres in the county, but is in fact first permanent garden tool recycling programme in the South West.

A number of prisons are already seeing the benefits of taking part in the Tool Shed project around the country, including Morton Hall in Lincolnshire and High Down Prison in Surrey.

David Shreeve, The Conservation Foundation’s Director, says: ‘With more and more schools and community groups ‘growing their own’, there is a great demand for garden tools and rarely any budget. Tools Shed is a popular initiative that provides practical skills to prisoners, reduces waste and helps equip the next generation of gardeners.’

The scheme was certainly a boost for gardeners working with Eden on an award-winning plot at the Chelsea Flower Show last year, when refurbished equipment was provided for the project. The group included individuals from prisons and homeless shelters working under Eden’s Growing for Life programme, which offers essential life skills to offenders in South West prisons, including business training and horticulture.

Howard Jones, who leads Eden’s work in this area, says:  ‘We think Tool Shed provides a great link between different and unlikely communities; it complements other work that we do and we are delighted to be involved.’

You can find Eden’s Tool Shed point near our Recycling Centre, next to Pineapple car park.

If you’re not based in Cornwall and are interested in dropping off tools, or getting hold of some for a school or community garden, check out the Conservation Foundation’s Tool Shed information online.

Find out more about Eden’s Growing for Life project, which offers essential life skills to offenders in South West prisons, including business training and horticulture. Check out the award-winning garden we created together at the Chelsea Flower Show.

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Categories:

Community, Horticulture, Potting shed, Recycling and waste, Sustainability

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Community, Horticulture, society, south west