Canterbury charity voice the importance of learning life-skills for those with learning disabilities

Fifth Trust teach gardening, cooking and arts and crafts to more than a hundred students and hope to help many more.

Transcript

00:00 The Garden of England, known for its plants, vegetables and of course vineyards.

00:07 A Canterbury garden centre has been supporting adults with learning disabilities since the 90s,

00:13 teaching skills for life to 150 students.

00:16 From cooking, to arts and crafts and even gardening.

00:20 Well today they're getting their fingers green.

00:23 What do you think?

00:28 I like everything, watering the plants and talk to them.

00:35 It's basic life skills really, anything from just being able to communicate to somebody on an appropriate level,

00:40 to be able to socialise with people, right up to learning to be independent.

00:45 So somebody might come in and just not be able to socialise with somebody because of a condition,

00:50 we support them in that environment to do that where they're comfortable to be able to socialise with people.

00:56 They're comfortable to be able to socialise, build friends, build relationships,

01:00 but in a working environment so that eventually people may be able to go on and hold down jobs or do voluntary jobs from that.

01:08 Fifth Trust has a range of plants and vegetables, which are looked after by the volunteers here who come along.

01:14 But it doesn't stop there, it's also home to a vineyard producing still and sparkling wines.

01:20 And this year so far the erratic climate has actually been a blessing for the vineyard's grapes.

01:26 In many respects the climate's been really good so far.

01:30 We had quite a mild winter, we had a lot of rain, we then had a lot of sun and then we've had a lot of rain again.

01:38 So that's actually been really good for the production and for the producing of the grapes.

01:43 The worry now though is that we're just not getting enough sunlight.

01:48 Here I am today bathed in sunlight, but it's quite a rare occasion here in East Kent.

01:52 We do need many, many more days of bright sunshine to really ripen the grapes up now.

01:58 These vines here have been producing grapes for 11 years.

02:01 Now wine grapes, they can take anywhere between three and five years until they're actually ready to be used for wine.

02:06 But vines themselves, they can last for centuries.

02:08 So say 100, 200 years time from now, we could see these exact vines still producing grapes for wine.

02:15 Well with 1,500 vines on site, it seems wine for the coming years won't be in short supply.

02:21 Sophia Aitken for KMTV in Canterbury.