Help For Heroes launches £100k appeal

Help for Heroes, and two local new providers – the Essex County Standard and Daily Gazette – are launching a new appeal this month, focused on the charity's Colchester recovery centre.

The plan is to create a new outdoor space to help veterans and serving personnel who have been wounded, injured or have fallen ill, as well as their families.

The Heroes Garden Project has the aim of raising £100k so that the VC House Help for Heroes Recovery Centre grounds, presently little more than scrubland, can be revamped.

It's planned that the garden will become two separate areas, one active-themed, one focused on reflection.

The first of these is going to offer a space to play sport like golf, and scale a climbing tower, for example. The reflective area will stimulate the senses and include an outside classroom to host workshops.

The project has the support of Farr and Roberts landscape designers. They have given their Hope on the Horizon show garden from the 2014 RHS Chelsea Flower Show to the space.

"This project will deliver a raft of new recovery experiences and capabilities, to enhance those already provided through the generosity of the Great British Public," said centre manager Steve Schollar.

He also said that VC House has been open for two years and that with the help of the Ministry of Defence and charity partners it has helped close to 600 veterans and serving personnel in that time.

Donations to the Heroes Garden scheme will help to do things like prepare the garden site, plant trees, install herbaceous borders and benches create new paths, create water features and more.

Many people want to support Help For Heroes. For example, just recently Halifax Sleaford staff gathered more than £600 for the charity at a cake sale event, the Sleaford Standard reports.