Image: A Tools Shed community project
Tools Shed gives gardening tools to young gardeners and gives prisoners something useful to do with their time
Tools Shed is a project supported by the Conservation Foundation which organises the collection of broken and unwanted gardening tools, delivers them to prisons for the inmates to repair in their workshop, and then gives them to schools and community groups for young gardeners to use.
Pre-Covid the scheme ran successfully in a number of prisons, including Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth, Dartmoor and Edinburgh, but the pandemic put paid to its activities.
Now Wormwood Scrubs in west London is ready to receive tools again for their inmates to mend and paint.
“Wormwood Scrubs is the first to come back on stream,” David Shreeve, Director of the Conservation Foundation, told The Chiswick Calendar.
“Their workshop will be reopening on 3 March, ready for spring.”
Image: Tools Shed workshop
The kind of tools they need are small hand tools, not electrical equipment such as strimmers or heavy spades, as they will be largely given to children to use. Tools Shed will be collecting them at the W6 Garden Centre at Ravenscourt Park, open every day, from 9am – 5pm Monday – Saturday and 9.30am – 5.30pm on Sundays.
They will also be collecting tools at the next Chiswick Repair Cafe this Saturday, 15 February (and the following one on Saturday 15 March) from 10.30am – 1pm at Christ Church on Turnham Green.
This is one of a number of environmental and community projects supported by the Conservation Foundation. Amongst other things, David has made it his mission to restock the UK with elm trees, and brought out a beautiful coffee table book about elms last year:
READ ALSO: Great British Elms, Mark Seddon and David Shreeve, book review
Image: A community group supported by Tools Shed
The garden centre has not been involved in the scheme before.
“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” owner Louise Alhadoff told us.
“We are excited to be on board. You can see how enthusiastic David is about it. I thought ‘I’m going to get on board with this project because you are someone who gets stuff done’.”
Tools Shed has made a difference to the lives of both the young people introduced to gardening and to prisoners.
“We’ve had some fantastic letters from prisoners,” said David. “One letter received said ‘Repairing tools gives me a reason to get up in the morning. I feel that I am involved with the local community’.
“I said to one prisoner how he was obviously taking great care with a repair, and he replied, ‘Well the thing is, this is the first proper job I’ve ever had’.”
They have even had a donation of funding from an ex-con.
Read more stories on The Chiswick Calendar
