Award-winning Chelsea Flower Show garden moves to Grimsby docks

An award-winning Chelsea Flower Show garden has a new home on Grimsby docks, where its designer hopes it will help people in recovery from addiction.

Garden designer Elisabeth Wright-McCalla won a silver-gilt medal for her Anywhere Courtyard at this year’s show.

The garden is now at the Great Escape building at the docks, which is a centre for people in recovery, run by Creative Start Arts In Health.

Anywhere Courtyard is the first green space in the historic Kasbah area of the docks.

The garden was designed to be modular. It has raised flower beds which form the back of seating, and is meant to be a sanctuary where people can sit and contemplate.

Creative Start runs an abstinence-based peer-support service provided by volunteers who themselves are in recovery from addiction.

There are community art projects throughout Grimsby and Cleethorpes, and the group has become well known for creating murals in the area.

Jon King, of Creative Start, told BBC Radio Humberside: “For us, it’s another element of recovery for the people we work with.

“We really understand the power of green space and being in nature and being in peace. Some of our guys are already planning meditation sessions out here, and also we want to welcome the public into it.”

Social enterprise Create Streets also worked with designer Ms Wright-McCalla to bring the garden to Grimsby docks.

The group has a project in Grimsby called Greening Up the Marsh, which aims to create more greenery in the East Marsh area of the town – one of the most deprived wards in the UK and where the docks are located.

Follow BBC East Yorkshire on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastyorkslincs.news@bbc.co.uk

Follow BBC Lincolnshire on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastyorkslincs.news@bbc.co.uk