The team at the Mill Lane Garden Centre

FOR 32 years Mill Lane Garden Centre, the social enterprise and non-profit charity, has been a focal point of the West Hampstead community, delivering important work training people with learning disabilities in gardening, woodwork and theoretical and social skills.

The garden centre sells plants, seeds, vegetables in the summer and offers gardening at people’s homes – and, right now, it’s selling Christmas trees. There are currently 16 trainees at the centre who come in five days a week. At the start of their course they create an independent learning plan where trainees discuss through self assessment what skills they would like to develop.

Declan Liesly, a trainee who has been at Mill Lane since 2017, said he has developed skills.

“I am proud of what I do and really like it, I have a lot of fun with all the people who work here,” he said. “I learnt skills in woodwork and gardening, I like talking to customers and today I was on the iPad working out the prices and doing some inventory.”

Barney Siegnor, manager at Mill Lane, said despite securing funding being difficult, customers were always very supportive.

He said: “With how little funding there is that governments are offering to local authorities or just to services for vulnerable people in general, it’s even more important that we have this community focus in areas.

“Something that has been really enthusing for me since working here is the community action that exists within West Hampstead that you don’t really see in many other boroughs.

“It’s important in the times that we are now for communities to come together and find ways we can support each other.”

He added: “There’s that old saying ‘a chain is only as strong as its weakest link’ and I think it’s similar with communities. If you’re not looking after the most vulnerable people in communities everyone else is going to start to fall down.

“As beneficial as Mill Lane is for our staff and trainees, here it’s also beneficial for members of the commun­ity who can feel a part of something. One of our former trainees who has autism and started coming to us this year expressed he wanted to learn more about customer service and retail.

“He was a bit shy when he started here and we could see he needed to develop his social skills and he has since secured himself a job doing administration and logistic support. We’ve supported him to develop those social skills so he’s able to integrate within a team and work with people to complete tasks.”

Mill Lane is currently in the process of fundraising for a vital redevelopment project which will ensure it is able to continue for another 32 years.

Mr Seignior said: “We will hopefully be expanding the space, because at the moment we’ve got a lot of different activities going on in one room and obviously that can create sensory issues.

“We’re also aiming to integrate a cafe here because not only would that be an opportunity for employment and apprenticeships, it would also be a good chance for the members of the community that connect with us and share our values to come enjoy a cup of tea and find out more about what we’re doing here.”

• The Makeover Mill Lane fundraiser is at: https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/makeovermilllane