Sydenham Garden applied to the Enterprise Development Programme (EDP) to help them scale up their flower farm social enterprise.
Social Impact
Founded in 2002 by a small group of local residents, Sydenham Gardens is both a well-being centre and a social enterprise, utilising gardens, nature reserves and activity rooms to help people in their recovery from mental and physical ill-health in the London borough of Lewisham.
They aim to do this by providing co-workers – primary beneficiaries an opportunity to take part in one of five main projects, along with many supplementary activities and clubs. Four of these projects are focused on Adult Mental Health and include gardening, art & craft, cooking and opportunities to achieve recognised qualifications. The fifth project is focused on Dementia and includes the same elements as other projects as well as Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST).
They aim to promote inclusion and reduce prejudice by bringing together co-workers with different degrees of mental and physical ill health, volunteers, and members of the local community to work together.
Sydenham Garden enable people to improve their quality of life, social interaction and physical and mental health in a supportive environment.
Used with permission from the Association of Mental Health Providers, copyright 2023.
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“As a small organisation you don’t have a lot of stretch or anything -we don’t have a lot of resilience. Something that we are obviously interested in working towards is resilient funding within the organisation and the enterprise income and work is very much a part of that”
David Lloyd
Founder and Growing Lives Project Coordinator at Sydenham Garden
How we helped
The programme provided Sydenham Garden with a lot of training to support the scaling up of the social enterprise of their organisation. The trainers provided a lot of insight and a wealth of experience from business practicalities and change management to volunteer management. Sydenham Gardens were also provided suggestions and support from within the cohort of organisations on the EDP programme as well as emotional support.
Additionally, the structure of the EDP programme was helpful as the project was set in milestones which gave them the opportunity to create concrete targets to structure themselves around and assist in scaling-up efforts. Moreover, the financial support allowed them to dedicate two days a week to focus on the development of the organisation. This has contributed to the development of a new strategic plan with their trustees to implement this learned knowledge into future business planning.
What was the outcome?
The EDP programme allowed them to scale up the flower farm side of their organisation at a rate they did not previously have the capacity to do. They have begun to engage with florists and scope out the market potential for increasing trading potential with their flower farm with target outputs in place. They have also started to diversify their crop production so that they offer a larger scope of products to potential buyers as well as increasing their market from wholesale florists to direct consumers. For Sydenham Garden the flower farm and selling their products more widely enables them to increase their community and the new people who will be in contact with them will also learn who they are as a charity. They have larger aims to continue to grow their influence in mental health spaces and talk about their approaches to therapeutic horticulture.
