Cultivating success

When the Places of Change show garden opens for four days at the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show in May, it will display the work of around 340 homeless and vulnerable people.

Most of those who designed, constructed and grew flowers and plants for the garden had no experience when work on it began six months ago. Yet they’ve all fed into one project despite the fact they’re service users at 41 homelessness organisations across England and Wales - as far afield as Swansea, Manchester, Hull and Plymouth.

The massive task of project managing the Places of Change Garden, one of 95 projects funded by the Homes and Communities Agency’s £80 million capital funding programme, with additional funding from the Department for Communities and Local Government falls to a team from the Eden Project, the world’s largest green house, in Cornwall.

Homeless Link, the umbrella body for homelessness organisations, brought the various participants on board, but it is Eden’s team, from its base in the south west of England, that saw the project through from beginning to end.

Housing professionals know what it’s like to be presented with tasks that seem too huge. With just six weeks until the garden - the largest in the history of the prestigious annual flower show - is revealed, members of the Eden team give their top tips for organising ambitious projects.

First things first

Before you launch into the fun, colourful aspects of any project, you must make sure you have got the basics right. ‘Soil preparation is key to long-term success,’ begins Hilary Bosher, growing co-ordinator for the Places of Change garden. ‘You must prepare it well, dig it over, and add organic matter.’

OK, so fertiliser doesn’t factor in the preparation of most projects undertaken in the housing sector, but any successful task needs to begin in a way that gives it the best possible chance of success: with a good brief.

‘Any project starts with a client [in this case, the HCA and CLG] who wants something done,’ explains Peter Tombs, associate project manager at consultancy Davis Langdon, who is overseeing the delivery of Places of Change. The client’s brief should provide a firm foundation for the project, with clear aims and timescales.

Know what you’re working with

Information gathering comes next. Last November, Homeless Link provided Eden’s Ms Bosher with a list of organisations that wanted to get involved in growing, and she went about discovering what facilities are available at each.

‘I sent out a pro-forma [an order form] to try to glean information, including how many clients were likely to be involved, the knowledge they had and the conditions for growing - for example, their water supply, did they have sunny or shady conditions, did they have any outdoor space?’ she recalls.

After Christmas, Ms Bosher went out to visit each of the centres to see the facilities for herself and to teach those involved in the project how to care for their plants and flowers. ‘I went out armed with seeds,’ she says.

Break it down

Around 25,000 plants are being grown across England and Wales, and they’ve all got to come together to form the Places of Change garden in May. In order to avoid being overwhelmed by the scale of a project, Davis Langdon’s Mr Tombs advises ‘breaking it into logical steps.’

The Places of Change garden has been divided into zones. ‘Any project, however big or small, needs to be divided into sections, otherwise it looks daunting,’ sums up Ms Bosher.

‘Learn to delegate’

So says Howard Jones, leader of the Places of Change project based at Eden. Mr Jones says that ‘appointing the right managers, who are well briefed and know what is expected of them’ is the key to success in any project. I never get people to do things beyond what they are good at,’ explains Mr Jones.

When working on such a large task, you cannot expect any one person to hold everything together.

Paul Stone, a member of the Eden team, is responsible for managing the delivery of the garden - and that’s what he concentrates on. Mr Stone is overseeing the design of the garden, he’ll be onsite at Chelsea three weeks before the show opens managing the construction of the garden and piecing it all together.

He is not, however, paying attention to providing training that could lead to further opportunities for participants. ‘I have to rely on my colleagues to offer the important training element of the project,’ explains Mr Stone.

Communication is key

No project can succeed without effective communication. In order to know what is happening on the ground at the 41 homelessness organisations involved in Places of Change the Eden team has found ‘a champion’ in each centre, usually a staff member, who they can contact directly.

The Eden Project has also enlisted 12 volunteers from information technology company Cisco Systems who are located nationwide and can visit each centre, acting as the team’s ‘eyes and ears’ on the ground.

Of course regular communication is essential, but when working on a massive project like Places of Change you can face communication overload, says Mr Stone. ‘Since I started this project, I’ve received three times as many emails as I used to - [keeping on top of them is] a massively time consuming activity in itself,’ he says.

‘I’ve coped by being selective about the emails I spend time reading,’ says Mr Stone, who’s also wary of simply pinging emails in response to people. ‘The project is at a point where email is too long-winded a form of communication - now we need a more personal touch - a conversation,’ he explains.

Mr Stone points out that communication when working on big projects is often external as well as internal. While putting together Places of Change, the Eden team has dealt with outside organisations including the media and members of the public.

Be realistic

Acknowledge any practical limitations your project is likely to face and plan around them. In November, Eden’s green team sat down and made a list of plants that would be at their best in May.

Unlike other show gardens on display at Chelsea this year, the plants and flowers in the Places of Change garden will be grown without the help of ‘commercial lighting and pristinely perfect conditions,’ says Ms Bosher - which means that the Eden team has to select its plants carefully.

The lack of high-tech facilities will be made up for with ‘enthusiasm’ she states, and 200 pots of bluebells - perfect for May - should look stunning.

Factor in the risks

One of the first questions a project manager asks their client is, ‘What risks do you want to take?’ states Mr Tombs. ‘The client should have a contingency in case things overrun or something comes up,’ he adds.

Eden’s Mr Jones suggests always looking for potential challenges before you start.

With a gardening project like Places of Change, weather was always going to be an issue, and it was a good job the Eden team factored this in - with the snow after Christmas putting visits to the growing centres back three weeks.

When relying on nature, you’ve got to have a fall-back plan, says Mr Jones. ‘You have to build in contingencies. We have more plants than we need and we have organisations providing back-up plants.’

Time’s ticking

The timescale for the Places of Change project has been worked backwards from 24 May.

The Eden team has ‘a list with every plant on it, and is contacting each organisation weekly to get a progress report including how many plants are looking good,’ says Ms Bosher.

The information is all fed into Google Docs, an online live tool which allows all those granted access the ability to access information.

With nearly 30 organisations across England and Wales growing plants in preparation for the Chelsea Flower Show, the Eden team is now planning the logistics of transporting the delicate produce to London.

‘The end product is the garden at Chelsea, but the project is what’s gone on behind it,’ explains Mr Tombs.

As is the case with many projects in the housing sector, the end product is not the only thing that matters.

With Places of Change, the most important thing is for the individuals involved to feel a sense of achievement - a positive experience to build upon.

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