Peter Thornett always saw the concrete space on Scraith Wood Drive as something with potential. It had been overlooked for years.
On this quiet, single street community, he felt one thing would be perfect... a community garden, but with little money available to the residents' association, there was little he could do.
Then came Sam Penrose, a third-year Architecture & Landscaping student at the University of Sheffield. Throughout his final year at university, Sam has been working, for free, to give Peter and the Scraith Wood Drive community exactly what it dreamed of.
Now, the end is in sight.
On this quiet, single street community, he felt one thing would be perfect... a community garden, but with little money available to the residents' association, there was little he could do.
Then came Sam Penrose, a third-year Architecture & Landscaping student at the University of Sheffield. Throughout his final year at university, Sam has been working, for free, to give Peter and the Scraith Wood Drive community exactly what it dreamed of.
Now, the end is in sight.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I really wanted to do something to actually bring people together again, to create a space
00:04which is kind of the idea of the garden, especially being where I'm sat at the moment
00:10an actual space for people to come in, so what I really want is people to actually come here
00:14have meetings, have community events, later on we're going to build a barbeque area and things like that
00:20I initially thought of this, as I say, just before Covid, so wow, and it's four years, four years now
00:26So I personally live just next, but I'm in a flat, so it's an upstairs flat, I don't have a garden myself
00:32I'm lucky enough to have an allotment nearby, so that's absolutely fantastic, but half the estate is flat
00:38so a lot of the idea was, how do people actually get a garden? Because with the prices of everything
00:44going up and up and up, the chances of most people actually being able to afford a house with a garden
00:48is so rare, and for me I'm very much aware of the spaces between people's houses
00:53It's very easy to think, well you live there and that's your garden, but what's the space in between?
00:57And that space is so relevant, and I think community is based in that space in between
01:01I mean, it's been a long time coming, construction, but by the end this should just feel like a pretty nice retreat
01:08from being in your house, being able to come outside, be with your neighbours in a green environment
01:16I mean, soon when all the plants have grown in, you'll feel immersed in nature
01:20and there's sort of thinner paths going through, far less of that tarmac and hard landscape feel to it
01:26and really it's about bringing the woodland down, which is an ancient woodland and scraped wood
01:32so residents are able to enjoy it a bit more and more accessibly
01:38and just feel like you're not in an urban environment, but in a more natural environment
01:45One of the happiest things for me is actually getting Sam from the University involved
01:49So he's been liaising with us for a year now, so if you think that's a year of the gentleman's time
01:54he has not been paid for a single penny, but it was him himself that actually found the grant money
01:59which was £6,000, which we would never have had
02:04so not only did he go out of his own time, and as far as I'm aware he was probably turned down by about 10 grant funding things beforehand
02:12so it's not just a lucky first hit, out of his own time he decided to help the community
02:17and hopefully that would help himself
02:19Actually in terms of doing something with those skills, this has just been so satisfying
02:23and it's really the best possible way to learn, until you're digging into asphalt you don't really know what's underneath
02:30you understand all these processes, all the problems that come your way
02:34but all in all it's been brilliant and it's lovely to see the community engage with it as well
02:39I'd really like to do this sort of thing again, I felt a real calling towards more community based projects
02:44and more corporate work, I think just seeing how much the volunteers have benefited
02:50and enjoyed their time doing this sort of thing
02:53and what it can do on a small level with a really quality outcome to really change people's lives