“Digging Deeside enhances me – it has helped me feel more alive”

Based in Flintshire, RainbowBiz CIC is a social enterprise, established nearly eight years ago, which supports some of the most marginalised members of the community. They enable and empower volunteers to develop skills, celebrate people, and engage with the local community.

They were recently awarded £10,000 to continue to run Digging Deeside, a social gardening project aimed at improving wellbeing and relieving carers' stress, for another year. The weekly community project offers basic gardening skills, life skills and the chance to make new friends. Most importantly, the project offers a safe place to meet like-minded people.

We spoke to the team at Digging Deeside, including directors, Sarah, Sue and Darren, about their work and how the project has changed all their lives in one way or another.

Sarah

“I’ve got a care background, professionally and personally, and when I moved to Wales to live with my wife, Sue, we wanted to utilise both our skills to work with people who needed support. I’ve also got an interest in gardening myself. I love being outside and I know how good it is for everybody’s mental health, so we decided to start running this gardening project.

I absolutely love the guys that come here. It’s hard to put into words, but when you see such a massive jump in somebody’s confidence or independence and know that it’s because they’ve been coming to this group for so long, I get a tad emotional. You can’t record it because it just happens. Something in the air makes people really relaxed out here in this environment.

It’s a safe place for people to be able to talk about anything that’s on their minds. Having a focus like gardening means that people we support can be doing something with their hands and not feel so self-conscious about talking about their own feelings. They will naturally start to communicate with other people and I think that’s at the heart of Digging Deeside really - that people are able to make social links with each other.”

Sue

“Digging Deeside is our true home, our base where we started, and we’ve grown from here (excuse the pun!). I’m disabled myself and there’s some days where I don’t feel I’ve got capacity to get out and do things, but I think about the people we support and the joy they get from the project and that just fills my heart with joy. I absolutely love being here for them and them being here for us.

My main skills are making a good cup of tea and giving out a good chocolate biscuit! However, I am slowly learning a bit about plant life and how to harvest fruit and I find it quite fascinating. I’ve started getting really interested in growing potatoes at home, just because I realised how easy it was when we did it on the project. I decided I could probably give that a go at home, as many of the other people have done, with Sarah’s support. I became more inspired to get out in my own garden, and this is testament to the skills I’ve learnt from Sarah on site at Digging Deeside.”

Darren (Daz)

Darren (also known as Daz) went to RainbowBiz for the first time around six years ago and was extremely vulnerable and isolated following a near-fatal car crash in his late teens. He lived at home with his parents for two decades and then sadly lost his mum.

His journey with RainbowBiz has been quite astonishing. He started as a very shy and quiet man, interested in helping on the allotments, but is now involved in just about everything they do. A couple of years ago, Sarah and Sue invited Daz to become a Director with them at RainbowBiz as his passion was clear to see. He has taken on this role and gone from strength to strength.

Daz explained what the project has done for him:

“I had a car crash in 1993 and had multiple injuries and head trauma. I had to cope with things and learn how to do things differently. I came here to get out of the house, to keep fit and to get involved with other people – to better myself.

I love gardening and I’ve started growing strawberries, potatoes, carrots and radish at home too. Wildflowers are my favourites, because it saves the bees, butterflies and insects – bees are amazing creatures, they put food on our tables.”

Darren is an advocate for bees and shares his knowledge with others in Digging Deeside. He also writes a blog post on a social media platform every day and goes into detail about his feelings and what he’s achieved by coming to the gardening plot.

"Since Digging Deeside I've become very confident to do things by myself, things that I found difficult to do beforehand, like chatting with people and making new friends. I've learnt gardening skills and I've learnt people skills. I talk for myself now instead of needing others to guide me in all that I do.

My new-found abilities allow me to help others, both in gardening and in support, and my health has improved immensely, physically and mentally. I feel that Digging Deeside enhances me. It has helped me feel more alive.”

Fozzy

“I’ve been involved with RainbowBiz for the last seven or eight years. I’m a DJ and sound engineer, and through COVID-19 we obviously haven’t been able to do any gigs so I got involved a bit more. I started doing a Friday online social and an IT project to get people online and keep in touch when they couldn’t come here.

I’ve had the opportunity now to start coming to Digging Deeside and it’s great being a project facilitator. It’s helped me to get involved with the community, to do something with nature and make new friends – it’s a focus rather than sitting at home on my own waiting for everything to start back up with the DJ and sound engineering work.”

James

“I wanted to come to Digging Deeside to give you a hand. If Daz is stuck, I can help him in the greenhouse.”

I love painting – I painted the benches, seats, posts and bandstand. I enjoyed doing the slabs and putting sand underneath for our new garden seat.

I learnt how to plant seeds here. I have a greenhouse at home and I grow strawberries, broccoli, cabbage, rhubarb, garlic, onions and tomatoes. I’ve been cooking and eating the food.”

Kate

Kate used to be a customer to RainbowBiz’ shop in Mold and heard about the gardening project there. She wasn’t very interested in gardening at first but has by now been going to Digging Deeside for almost two years and hasn’t looked back since.

“I’ve come here to change my life. I love making friends, having a good time and having a laugh.

I’ve also learnt the difference between plants and weeds.”

Harry

“I started coming to Digging Deeside through the Job Centre. I love the get-together and it’s something to do. It’s good for your body and mind.”

“I’ve learnt to grow stuff, and I’ve done some painting. The National Lottery funding has made it possible to do more stuff. It’s good for the community.”

“There’s been an awful lot of worry over the last year and we’re so grateful and humbled to receive National Lottery funding to carry on going for at least another 12 months, because we don’t know what these guys would’ve done without this project.” Sarah

“The funding will give us the breathing space we need as an organisation to come back out of the pandemic and to start to generate our own revenues again through our shop in Mold. We’re just so grateful to National Lottery players because it has meant the absolute world - not only to us as an organisation, but to the people we support.” Sue

Find out more about RainbowBiz and Digging Deeside

National Lottery players raise £36 million each week for good causes throughout the UK. Find out more about National Lottery funding in Wales.