Providing our people with the opportunity to take part in community projects is something we are really keen to encourage, and staff in our Regional Prime and Housing contracts can take up to two days per year to participate in a project that benefits their local community or charity.
Our team in the Central region of our Regional Prime contracts recently used their community day to tidy up a medicinal garden at Defence Medical Services (DMS) Whittington, which had become untidy and overgrown.
The garden was created for the education, welfare and enjoyment of the Service personnel stationed at the Unit. Each plant has a link to medicine either being used directly as a medicine, or is named after a famous medical figure, or has another medically related use. It also includes a red gravel path which represents the Red Cross proudly worn by DMS personnel and the number of plants signifies the total number of Victoria Crosses, won by members of the RAMC-31.
Our first team of enthusiastic gardeners arrived on Tuesday of last week but unfortunately due to the heavy rainfall, had to abandon all attempts to weed. Luckily, we had another group of volunteers who made themselves available the following day and, armed with photographs to differentiate between the weeds and plants, worked tirelessly to get the job done. As the garden is located in a busy area of the Station, local Service personnel offered words of encouragement as they passed by which helped to keep our team motivated and focused on the job in hand.
Staff Sgt SA Benson RAMC, designed the garden in 2014 and although currently based in Imphal Barracks in York, he heard about the great work our team had done and was keen to send his thanks; “It has been brought to my attention that Amey very kindly carried out some weeding at the medicinal garden at DMS Whittington. Please accept my thanks as the person who built the garden for all your hard work and effort. I’ve been shown some photos of how it looks now and my grin is as wide as a Cheshire cat’s. Thank you to everyone involved.”