Community Places
Mires Beck Nursery places are found for as many people as possible in the East Riding of Yorkshire and Humber region. We will consider every application and endeavor to accommodate those adults looking for a day service which offers a training and social benefit within a horticultural and conservation environment. Our facility also provides places within our catering team and also for Green Art and craft work where we focus on natural craft.
We have over 100 service users on site working across all areas of the nursery, each coming for between 1 to 5 days. The age range of service users at the nursery usually starts from 18 years old. Due to the length of time the people stay with us, we also have community into much older years. The nursery also accommodates transition Taster Days where some SEN students from 16 years old will spend days with a one to one support as a trial for attending.
Once a place has been requested, a visit to the nursery will take place and a Taster Day will be agreed to gain insight into the work that we do at Mires Beck. We endeavour not to decline anyone so long as we have a place and we can safely support the service user. We invite colleges and schools to engage with us for their students and pupils looking for places now and for the future. Please contact us for information how to arrane a visit.
Our service users have a community Facebook page by invitation where they, their families and our staff engage in sharing the life of our precious community.
To plan your route to Mires Beck Nursery, please either look at the map at the bottom of the 'Home' or 'Contact Us' pages, or download it by clicking here.
What We Can Offer
Occupational Therapy For Adults 18+
Full day (6 hours)
Medium sized team (approximately 7 people)
Work place training in horticulture and commercial growing
On our 14 acre green site, we deliver work based training in countryside management tasks
Training on plants grown to benefit the environment and biodiversity, conservation planting and tree production within our Habitats operation.
Art thearapy as part of the Anniversary Garden Team.
Intervention (people managing a short-term crisis)
A bespoke programme of green therapy in agreement with adult services and opportunity for NHS Transforming Care patients
6 hours
One-to-one sessions and work space can be arranged
Horticultural Training for Transition (Young people between ages 16 and 18 years old)
Half-day as an introduction to Mires Beck Nursery and teams
3 hours taster session with our Wildflower Team
Small team placements of (approximately 6 people) can be provided horticultural learning space weekly
College Term Holiday Placements
Attendance for term break for individuals as funding permits
Small team placement (approximately 4 people)
Day Service Teams Mires Beck Nursery
Mires Beck Teams
The charity employs 44 full and part time members of staff, including business apprentices and is an important employer in rural East Yorkshire. Our people are caring, enthusiastic individuals dedicated to the welfare of our service users and the quality of work produced. They are highly regarded by the families of the community and they are trained to deliver the best outcomes for the charity’s aims.
The team delivers the CARE approach adopted at the nursery which embraces all of our community individuality. Training is ongoing throughout the year and every August we close for one week to repeat compliance training needed as an adult day services provider. We are working towards offering accredited horticultural and arboricultural training as well as teaching crafts and cookery. These classes are open to any service user. Please contact us for more information.
Wildflower Team
The team works hard to produce many thousands of Yorkshire provenance wildflowers every year. These plants help enhance the rich wildlife potential of our glorious county. They now have a comprehensive seed stock and collect most varieties on site from the abundance planted at the nursery. They also grow tens of thousands of Phragmites (common reeds) for sale to wetlands all over the UK. They have a specialist knowledge in this horticulture and have many large projects we supply annually.
The Wildflowers Team also manages the conservation projects onsite alongside the grounds care team. Click Here to read about conservation at Mires Beck.
Perennial Team
The Team is responsible for the production and care of over 300 of varieties Herbaceous Perennials. Many are bought in as plugs, but also we produce our own through seed sowing, cuttings and division. The fantastic quality of plants produced by the team with the careful supervision of our experienced and knowledgeable plant experts, provide the charity with the ability to wholesale and retail at the nursery and also to attend external plant fairs.
They enter plant shows and have a history of awards for both the quality and displays of plants the perennial team have produced. They’re usually found in or around the glasshouse, potting up, weeding or cutting back. As we approach the end of the summer season the team prepares for sale our jute bags of spring bulbs and in winter dress the pots for the dwarf Christmas trees we sell at our Christmas fairs.
Grounds Care Team
The work is very varied in the Grounds Care Team. They maintain the 14 acre rural horticultural site and carry out all the countryside management our nursery, meadows and woodland requires. This is a huge undertaking of mowing meadows, planting wildflowers throughout the woods and managing the planting of young trees. From splitting giant logs and clearing pathways in the woods, to felling trees for conservation or to fuel our log burners. They support the conservation aims and help with developing the projects around the site. The team maintains our rabbit proof boundaries and general fencing requirements as well as general path maintenance around the nursery. Access to the site is also maintained by the team who regularly manage the vital work to the rural approach road for all traffic into the nursery.
Tree Team
The team grow thousands of trees every year, all from a certified supply of British seed and grown in root trainers. These trees create new woodlands and hedges to help support conservation projects across the county. We are also working with business to provide companies with trees to help to offset their carbon footprint.
Anniversary Garden Team
Here is a place of creativity, horticulture and art therapy, for our service users who need more personal care due to more profound physical challenges. They are a team of 7 service users and 3 members of staff whose aim is to keep everyone engaged and happy while developing new skills along the way. These include improving individual mental focus, improving overall wellness, dexterity and physical ability. The varied activities are also aimed at promting a calming atmosphere for the service users to feel relaxed. They enjoy potting up plants, lots of singing, craft session, nature walks and games.
Plant Prep Team
The Plant Prep Team are a small team with 4 to 5 service users, and from March to September they are busy preparing orders for Garden Centres and farm shops. The service users are able to collect customer orders and prepare them for dispatch and are very proud to see our plants when we visit our customers to tend their displays. This means that the team are in charge of collecting orders, weeding the plants, passporting, then printing a point of sale for the garden centres. The quality of the plants dispatched by the team is credit to the standard of plants grown and enhances our reputation as a serious grower for garden centres around the county.
Retail
Mires Beck Nursery is open to the public and managed by a team of 3 retail staff who help with customer service and assist the plant rotation and displays on the nursery. They are knowledgeable and can help you understand the bed and bench layout if you have never visited before. The team works from March to October and during the winter help where needed within the craft teams. We are working to expand onsite retail and sell more of the wood craft made throughout the autumn.
Garden Team
The garden team take care of all the wonderful flower beds and garden borders on our site. The flower beds inspire our customers and demonstrate different gardening styles which Alice our Head Gardener is developing around the nursery. They weed, water, prune, cut back and plant out lots of different herbaceous plants, herbs and shrubs. They sow seeds, take cuttings, pot-up bulbs and plants, and even grow fruit and vegetables.
Our vegetables provide food for the kitchen team who prepare lunch daily. This year onsite we are expanding our vegetable garden, which is managed by Suzanne who is a regular volunteer and we have added over 10 new extra large vegetable beds to broaden the variety we also hope to start to sell summer 2020.
Herb Team
We teach our service users about growing good quality herbs, from seed sowing and potting on, to displaying and selling to our customers. We are currently supplying herbs weekly to over 10 garden centres within the county and this year we have collaborated with the Friends of Mires Beck to create a new herb recipe book featuring the herbs at Mires Beck available now. We encourage and develop their skills in a friendly and fun way. In the winter the team is engaged to make a variety of herb planters, insect boxes and bug hotels, which are very popular.
