A GROUP of neighbours from Bridport have created an edible community garden which has given elderly people a peaceful place to isolate during lockdown.

14 neighbours from East Street, Melville Square and Back Rivers Lane have been working on the edible community garden and the nearby river garden for three years to create a space for the surrounding houses to enjoy the outdoors and socialise.

Hester Schofield, a write and lecturer at Bournemouth University, has been involved with the project since the start. She said: "It all started about three years ago. There was a bit of land by the river that was overgrown so one of the elderly residents, Hans, started clearing the riverbank and planting flowers.

"He put a bench in there and invited people to come and sit and since then it has been a place for neighbours to meet up and have a drink or a barbecue.

"There was also a stretch of unused land about 25 yards from the river garden which was unused so, about 18 months ago, some neighbours started clearing the land and doing what they could to help."

Earlier this year, the neighbours won a lottery grant of £1,000 to spend on the edible community garden. The money was used to buy chickens and chicken feeders, paving slabs, a shed and a beehive full of bees.

The money also afforded the neighbours to buy a range of fruit trees, including a plum tree, pear tree, apple tree and quince tree, and a number of fruit bushes, including redcurrants, blackberries and blueberries.

Hester said: "The soft fruit will come in late summer this year but the trees probably won't fruit until next year. We have arranged the plants so that the fruit will hang over the pathway and people can pick fruit when they walk underneath."

The neighbours are hoping to share their knowledge with the wider community and have plans to run workshops on how to keep chickens and bees. They hope to use their experience of creating a community garden as a model so that other people around Bridport can set up gardens in other unused patches of land in the area.

Hester said: "The garden has really brought all of the neighbours together and given us a focal point so we can organise social things.

"Now everyone knows each other and when we cross paths everyone speaks to each other and catches up. During lockdown it has been brilliant, especially for elderly people who would have been really isolated, and now they can go to the river garden and isolate but still get out and speak to their neighbours. We have a real community."

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