New community garden blooms thanks to team effort

The garden has been created outside the Co-op car park by SPIOTA, Stokesley Pride in Our Town, on what was a wasteland with a few neglected shrubs.

It has been transformed into a colourful garden with flowers, shrubs, benches and paving.

Caroline Rathmell, who was at the heart of turning the idea into a reality, said: "The idea originated in the Autumn of 2019 but was held up due to Covid. The Co-op owns the land but were happy for us to take it over and we applied for funding through the Co-op Community Fund which was successful."

Dave Fontana from Ground Control cleared all the roots and removed the trees, and landscape gardener, Dave Weighell, designed the garden. The planting was done by SPIOTA members.

The new community garden in Stokesley

Chair of the group, Linda Purnell, thanked all the teams and individuals involved, as well as the staff of the Co-op for their support. "People love it," she said. "Someone said to me that it is the best area of Stokesley."

Steven Lee, assistant manager of the Co-op, said: "This reflects the amazing work SPIOTA have done with the funding awarded by Co-op members. It shows what good comes from us all pulling together."

In the early 1990s, founders members of SPIOTA, two Rotarians, Mike Irving and Alan Weighell, were spurred into action to clean up Stokesley when a visitor said that the town had nice people but it was scruffy. "We were a bit upset about that", said Mike, "so we immediately began to clean up the town with funding from Rotary. We had a committee meeting and SPIOTA was born."

Both the founder members opened the garden, and in addressing the crowd, Mike had only one word to say: "Wow!"