DIY SOS support for charity's community garden project

Presenter Nick Knowles said the show had wanted to come to Fegg Hayes sooner

The DIY SOS team has started work on a community garden to support a charity in Stoke-on-Trent.

Sylvester's Community Trust was set up in 2017 to deliver food boxes and run workshops in the Fegg Hayes area.

But it does not have the funds to carry out the work itself and asked for help.

Presenter Nick Knowles said the team had wanted to get involved "for some time", but it "got sort of side-lined a little bit by the pandemic and how we could work around it."

The show said the charity was performing "inspiring acts of kindness" in an area of "enormous need" and the garden was its latest project.

It said the group had "developed the idea of converting a dead space of land into a multi-functional area, which offers a sense of relief to its local residents."

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Matthew Skilton, from the DIY SOS team, said: "We've already actually done some pre-works here. The ground work has been done so that we could access [the] site, so we're gonna sort of hit the ground running."

He said the team had got "some foundations going in" for a building which was going to be a "lovely central hub for the community" and it was going to be "flying in on a crane" on Thursday.

The DIY SOS team said it had already got some of the groundwork done

Mr Skilton said the garden would also become a headquarters for the residents association.

He explained: "There'll be an office space here, which will also have within it [a] kitchen and a meeting space which will be available to the community.

"Then there'll be a workshop, where we're partnering with [a project] to create a space for people...to get out and come and use some of their skills, do something practical for the community, maybe run a bike workshop, maybe fix up some furniture, that sort of thing."

He said the team had been inundated with help, but could still do with the support of carpenters, joiners and people who can help build vegetable beds.