CCEP Cold Drinks Operations Centre

Special Olympics GB provides year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of skills, gifts and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community.

Created in 2003 from a derelict allotment site, the Orchard now houses over 50 fruit trees, a sensory garden, wildlife pond and much more. It's open to the public 24/7 and is well used for picnics, get-togethers etc. We hold 3 community events a year with live music and refreshments, as well as weekly volunteer sessions every Tuesday throughout the year. All are welcome! In 2013 we were honoured to receive the King's Award for Volunteer Service, equivalent to the MBE for groups

"Planting Up" is a Transition Town Milton Keynes permaculture project whose mission is to encourage, educate and empower people to create local, sustainably run, community gardens that connect us to the natural world and each other in growing food, enhancing wildlife habitats, and cultivating our communities. Our base is at Westbury Arts Centre (in Shenley Wood) where we have a forest garden that our volunteers meet at every other Sunday. This provides us with a beautiful, friendly, and well-established place for us to run events and hold our volunteer garden work parties, where we enjoy being outside together, doing some organic “no-dig” gardening and connecting with art and nature for better health and wellbeing. Taking what we have learned from creating a community "food forest" at Westbury Arts Centre, we also support local communities to develop their own community gardens across Milton Keynes (MK), which we do by running "permablitzes" with corporate volunteers and community groups to help other gardens get started. As part of our work to help MK increase biodiversity, reduce food inequalities, and maintain good health and wellbeing by better connecting with nature and each other, we are also part of the Grapevine collaboration project involving "Building Health Partnerships" with social prescribers. Our group at Christ the Vine Community Church in Coffee Hall meets every Friday from 10am - 1pm, giving local people a place to socialise, do arts and crafts and garden. Our focus on permaculture means that we recycle, reuse materials, and keep things as local as possible - helping to benefit local people, save money, protect the environment, and reduce our carbon footprint. Our gardening days and public events also mean we work together to practice the 5 Ways to Wellbeing: Learning about growing our own food, being active, taking notice and giving time to care for wildlife and people, and connecting all of these things to benefit from the organic produce and better health and relationships we grow. Everyone is welcome. You can sign-up on our website to become part of our volunteer group and receive email updates about our events (as well as other like-minded MK events) and generally hear about "permie" MK news. We're also on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram if you want to connect with us there. Otherwise, we are contactable on email: info@plantingup.co.uk