Rooted Connections CIC, Worden Park, Leyland (2026)

29/09/2026

🌱 Learn practical gardening skills at the Walled Garden in Leyland.

We’re working with Lancashire Adult Learning to bring an Introduction to Gardening Skills course to Worden Park this November.

Whether you want to look after your own garden, develop skills for volunteering, explore a future in horticulture or simply enjoy learning something new, this is a welcoming place to start.

You’ll learn to identify plants and trees, care for garden tools and carry out everyday garden maintenance. No previous gardening experience is needed.

📅 Starts Tuesday 3 November 2026
🕐 Tuesdays, 1–3.30 pm, for four weeks
📍 The Walled Garden, Worden Park, Leyland, PR25 1DJ
👥 For adults aged 19+

This intro course is fully funded for anyone living in Lancashire and aged 19+. There is no earnings criteria for the introduction course, so this is open to all.

The course includes certification on successful completion, with opportunities to progress to Level 1 and Level 2 study.

Please share with anyone who might be interested, including colleagues, volunteers and local community groups.

Find out more and register https://rootedconnections.org.uk/events/introduction-to-gardening-skills-lancashire

24/09/2026

🫖 Every great garden has a place the visitors rarely see. This was theirs.

🌿 250 Years of Worden Walled Garden | Chapter 11: The Bothy

Look beyond the flowers in this wonderful old photograph and, at the end of the path, you'll spot a small brick building.

The Bothy.

It wasn't one of Worden's grand buildings.

But for the people who actually made the garden work, it mattered.

The Bothy formed part of the working heart of the Walled Garden, alongside the vinery, potting sheds and growing structures.

This was the world of the gardeners.

A Head Gardener and his team were responsible for keeping this huge productive garden running — growing fruit, vegetables and flowers for the Hall and tending everything from peaches and grapes to the everyday crops needed in the kitchens.

We can only imagine the conversations that took place around here.

What needed sowing.

What was ready to harvest.

Whether the peaches were behaving themselves.

And, inevitably, what the Lancashire weather had decided to do that morning. 🌧️

There's something we love about the Bothy because it brings the history back to the people.

The glasshouses tell us about innovation.

The melon pit tells us about engineering.

The Bothy reminds us about the gardeners who made it all happen.

As we restore Worden, we don't just want to preserve the impressive bits.

We want to preserve the everyday places too.

The places where people worked, shared knowledge, formed friendships and spent their lives caring for this extraordinary garden.

💚 Next week: The Potting Sheds – The Engine Room of the Garden.

Do you remember the Bothy, or know somebody who worked in this part of Worden? We'd love to hear your memories.

23/09/2026

🌱 Know a young person who could use a different kind of next step?

We’re now taking referrals for Roots & Routes, our new fully funded programme at the Walled Garden in Worden Park, Leyland.

It’s for young people who may be out of education, employment or training, at risk of disengaging, or simply finding traditional learning and support environments difficult.

There are no classrooms and no gardening experience is needed.

Instead, we’ll spend time outdoors, in a small and supportive group, getting involved in:

🌱 Growing and gardening
🐝 Wildlife and biodiversity projects
🛠️ Hands-on projects around the Walled Garden
🤝 Working alongside others and being part of something

Along the way, we’ll help young people build confidence, routine, practical skills, social connection and a sense of achievement, at their own pace.

Roots & Routes may be particularly suitable for young people experiencing anxiety, low confidence, social isolation, neurodivergence, SEMH needs, or other barriers that make more formal settings difficult.

The goal isn't to have everything figured out.
Sometimes the first step is simply finding somewhere you feel comfortable turning up. 💚

📍 The Walled Garden, Worden Park, Leyland
🌱 Fully funded
🔗 Find out more / register or refer:
https://rootedconnections.org.uk/events/roots-and-routes-young-adult-gardening-programme-leyland

Parents, carers and professionals can refer.

Please share; you might help this reach a young person who really needs something like this.

21/09/2026

🌿 Fancy some fresh air and good company this afternoon?

Our Monday Social Gardening session is on today at The Walled Garden, Worden Park, Leyland - 1–3pm.

Come along for a couple of hours of gentle gardening, lovely people and a warm cuppa. ☕🌱

There are tasks for all abilities, so you don't need to be an experienced gardener, just turn up as you are and get involved in whatever feels right for you.

We hope you've had a lovely weekend… but if you haven't, that's okay too. 💚 Come and spend a little time outdoors with us, we can pretty much guarantee you'll leave feeling more uplifted than when you arrived.

🌿 1–3pm today
📍 The Walled Garden, Worden Park, Leyland
☕ Warm drinks, friendly faces & plenty to get stuck into
💚 Everyone welcome

19/09/2026

Please choose UK wool. Please choose independent.

Supporting UK wool means supporting the people behind it.
UK sheep farmers, independent wool mills and local independent wool shops all play an important part in our wool industry — and independent wool shops need your support so we can support them.

At Flock & Skein, our wool is responsibly sourced, with no air miles or sea freight involved. We choose wool from farms where high standards of animal husbandry matter, and where quality, not quantity, is the priority.

Wool is natural, renewable and biodegradable, unlike synthetic fibres such as acrylic, polyester and nylon, which are plastic-based and can shed microfibres.

At Flock & Skein, we’re proud to champion UK wool from farm to yarn.

Please choose wool. Please choose UK. Please support our farmers, our mills and our independent wool shops.

18/09/2026

***Update: the first 6 week programme is now fully booked! What an amazing response 😊 we can't wait to meet you all. If you would like to join and missed out on the first one, we are running 2 more 6-week programmes so please pop your details in the form and we will contact you as soon as they go live. 💚

🌿 We are so excited to announce our first fully funded course at the Walled Garden!

Held – a project by Rooted Connections is a new six-week wellbeing programme created for parents and carers of children aged 0–5.

Thanks to funding from South Ribble Borough Council, places on the programme are fully funded. 🤍

Held is about making some time and space for you.

Over six weeks, the same small group will come together at the Walled Garden to explore meditation, breathwork, gentle movement, journalling and creative activities, with time to talk, reflect, share and connect with other parents and carers navigating the early years.

There’ll be time outdoors, herbal teas, conversation and the chance to slow things down for a little while.

Held puts your wellbeing at the centre. 🌱

✨ Fully funded places
🌿 Six weekly sessions with the same small group
🤍 For parents & carers of children aged 0–5
📍 The Walled Garden, Worden Park, Leyland
🧘 Meditation • breathwork • gentle movement • creativity • sharing • connection

One booking secures your place for all six weeks.

Places are limited to keep the group small.

Bookings are now open:
👉 https://rootedconnections.org.uk/events/held-wellbeing-for-parents-leyland

A huge thank you to South Ribble Borough Council for supporting us to bring our first fully funded course to the Walled Garden. 💚

11/09/2026

🍈 Apparently grapes weren't challenging enough. Someone looked at our glorious Lancashire weather and thought... melons.

🌿 250 Years of Worden Walled Garden | Chapter 10: The Melon Pit

Tucked away in the Walled Garden is one of our favourite pieces of its horticultural history.

The melon pit.

Around two-thirds of it sits below ground, and it was once covered with heavy glazed frames. Beneath them, cast-iron heating pipes provided warmth, creating a carefully controlled environment for growing crops that weren't exactly designed for Lancashire weather.

This was gardening before electric heaters, thermostats and automated ventilation.

If the weather wasn't going to cooperate, Worden's gardeners simply engineered their way around it.

And despite the name, it wasn't only melons. Former gardeners also remembered cordon tomatoes being grown here.

These two photographs show the story beautifully.

📷 Then: the melon pit with its glazed frames in place.
📷 Now: the structure survives, but the glass has gone and it currently sits beneath a temporary covering.

Importantly, underneath that covering, the stone-flagged floor and old cast-iron heating pipes still survive.

And one day, we'd love to restore it.

To preserve what's left, reinstate its character and bring this fascinating little piece of the Walled Garden back into use.

Because nearly 250 years ago, this wasn't old-fashioned gardening.

It was cutting-edge horticulture.

And perhaps one day we'll grow melons here again. 🍈💚

Do you remember the melon pit under glass, or what was once grown inside it? We'd love to hear your memories.

01/09/2026

Growing grapes in Lancashire is one thing 🍇

Growing enough to harvest 120–140lb in a good year is quite another.

🌿 250 Years of Worden Walled Garden

Chapter 9, Inside the Vinery

The secret wasn't just the vine.

It was everything built around it.

By the mid-nineteenth century, when the Walled Garden appears on the earliest Ordnance Survey mapping, a vinery was already part of the garden.

This was horticultural technology.

Glass captured the warmth of the sun. Ventilation helped gardeners control temperature and humidity. Heating could extend the growing season. Water had to be carefully managed.

And every vine needed pruning, training and tending by gardeners who understood exactly what they were doing.

The surviving vinery at Worden still contains clues to that working past.

When the garden was researched in the 1990s, its old ventilation mechanism was still in place, along with a built-in water cistern behind the entrance door.

And above it all grew the Black Hamburg vines.

Five were recorded at the time, producing up to 140lb of grapes annually.

This wasn't gardening by accident.

It was knowledge passed from gardener to gardener, combined with engineering designed to create the right conditions for something extraordinary to grow.

And that's perhaps what makes standing beneath the vine today so special.

We're not simply looking at an old plant.

We're standing inside part of a horticultural system that generations of gardeners understood, maintained and improved.

Some of that knowledge has disappeared.

Some of the machinery has gone.

But the vine is still here.

Still growing.

Still producing grapes.

And now we're learning how to care for it all over again. 💚

📖 From the archives: Research from the 1990s records the vinery's ventilation mechanism and built-in cistern, alongside five Black Hamburg vines producing up to 140lb of grapes annually.

🌱 Writing the next chapter by uncovering the last 250 years.

Next week: The Melon Pit — Growing the Impossible Underground.

31/08/2026

In celebration of World Alzheimer’s Day 2026, on Thursday 17th September, The South Ribble Dementia Community Connection are holding a walk – we are calling it a Living Well Walk.

It is a gentle walk through Longton Nature Reserve, suitable for all.

We start at 11am and there is some great music and singing from Katy Bradley from KTB Music, along with refreshments and some great information around dementia and living well with dementia at the end.

To attend please just turn up or for any questions email [email protected] or call 01772 625625 and leave a message for Louise.

29/08/2026

🌿 250 Years of Worden Walled Garden

Chapter 8 - The Hampton Court Mystery🍇

This week, our volunteers harvested grapes from the old vine at Worden.

But just how far back does the story of grapes in this garden go?

Much further than we first realised.

In 1795, Shaw Hall (as Worden was then known) was described as having a “very excellent kitchen garden with fruit stoves”.

Then, during the nineteenth century, a newspaper report records something remarkable being exhibited locally:

“Grapes from Shaw Hall, grown against a wall in the open air.”

By the time the garden appeared on the earliest Ordnance Survey mapping around 1850, a vinery was already established against the north wall.

Later generations continued the tradition. Black Hamburg vines are documented here in the twentieth century, producing as much as 120–140lb of grapes in a good year.

And now, in 2026, another generation has stood beneath the vines and harvested grapes once again. 💚

But there’s a mystery running through this story…

For years, people have told us that Worden’s vine grew from a cutting taken from the famous Great Vine at Hampton Court Palace.

The dates make the story tantalising.

The grape-growing heritage at Worden is certainly old enough.

But so far, we’ve found no letter, receipt or estate record that proves the connection.

And that matters.

Part of uncovering the history of this place means being honest about the difference between what we can prove and what has been passed down through generations.

So, for now, the Hampton Court connection remains one of Worden’s great mysteries.

But what we can say with confidence is perhaps just as remarkable:

🍇 People have been successfully growing grapes here for well over two centuries — and they’re still doing it today.

📖 From the archives: Historical records reveal a remarkable progression of fruit growing at Worden, from eighteenth-century fruit stoves, to nineteenth-century wall-grown grapes and a vinery, through to the Black Hamburg vines documented in the twentieth century.

💚 Writing the next chapter by uncovering the last 250 years.

Next week: Inside the Vinery — How Lancashire Gardeners Grew Grapes.

Rooted Connections CIC

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