case study:
Innovative people, with an Ace up their sleeve

showing how micro-enterprise works for public bodies

Dave and Sarah live and work in the East Midlands, have a passion for gardening and have skills and experience in delivering care services. They have an imaginative and innovative idea for a new service and are being supported to explore these ideas by Tracy Turner the Micro Service Coordinator in Nottingham City.

The Ace of Spades Community Gardening Company is emerging out of Dave and Sarah’s combined passions and skills. If it gets off the ground, the service will offer older people and those with a disability or illness support to engage in gardening and horticultural activities at a pace and level that they feel comfortable with. The service will have the aim of encouraging physical and psychological well-being of its gardeners by helping them to work outdoors, interact with the natural environment and maintain what may have been a lifelong hobby or interest.

Amongst others Dave and Sarah feel that Ace of Spades may be of interest to older people who used to love to care for their own garden but for reasons of declining health can no longer do so. It might also appeal to carers who wish to maintain their garden, enable the person they care for to participate in an activity that they used to enjoy and give the carer some free time confident that their family member is being well supported.

The service might also appeal to people who live in a residential care home and to care home providers. It could enable the care home provider to make better use of garden maintenance budget whilst providing the people who live in the home with a hobby and a real interest in their surroundings

Getting any new venture off the ground can be challenging and one as imaginative as Ace of Spades that combines an element of care with something as different as gardening is more challenging than most. Tracy Turner is working closely with Dave and Sarah as part of a partnership project with the City Council partly funded by the East Midlands Joint Improvement Partnership and these challenges and barriers are being explored. Let’s hope Dave and Sarah manage to make it work – if they do Ace of Spades will definitely offer its gardeners and customers more for less at a time when that is increasingly attractive.

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