The Eastbourne Sustainability Action Network (SAN) recently held its annual seedling swap/sale.
Over 60 staff and students from across the university attended the event held in the Aldro garden at the university’s Darley Road campus. Neighbours also participated, as well as family members of students, staff from Eastbourne Borough Council, and representatives from two community garden projects.
There was an opportunity to browse and buy seedlings grown on site, and chat to the students that grew them. Occupational therapy students were able to explain how the plants were grown in a sustainable way as part of their creative skills modules, using resources and time that were also used for teaching and therefore gaining additional output for the same resource.
Many of those attending reflected on the concept of buying locally and the reduction in the need to visit a garden centre. Some who were new to gardening expressed that they were looking forward to growing their own for the first time.
For the students involved the event showed that horticulture activities could be a self-funding occupational therapy intervention – an excellent thing in times of severe cuts to services.
Everyone who attended received an introduction to the SAN agenda and an invitation to join future meetings or get involved in other ways.
The sale raised just over seventy pounds for St Catherine’s Hospice, an organisation that supports University of Brighton occupational therapy student practice placements.
