A Harrogate horticultural charity’s garden has welcomed dozens of guests from right across Yorkshire as part of the celebrations of one of its main business supporters’ 50th anniversary.
Developer the Banks Group chose to hold its anniversary reception for its Yorkshire-based team and contacts at the Bluecoat Wood Nurseries of Horticap, which provides opportunities for adults with learning and other disabilities to get hands-on training in activities such as garden maintenance, horticulture and crafts.
Banks is a long-term supporter of Horticap’s work, with a recent five-figure sponsorship helping the charity buy a new electric van which is uses to takes students off-site to tend other gardens around the Harrogate area.
The electric vehicle is decorated with the Horticap and Banks brands, and it also features the face of Horticap’s patron, Alan Titchmarsh, who sent a surprise congratulatory video message as part of the event.
Horticap currently has around 55 adults with different disabilities on its books, almost all of whom live across the Harrogate, Knaresborough and Ripon area, and uses gardening as a way to help them develop and improve their social and personal skills alongside their horticultural knowledge.
Previous funding from the Banks Group enabled Horticap to revamp its popular nature trail in 2021, with additional seating areas, new pond screening and interpretative boards added in and a new sunken garden created to provide a social space that is now well used by visiting schools and community groups.
A further £4,821 given in 2024 enabled Horticap to bring in two new 56 feet long polytunnels, which provide a better growing and learning environment for students to work in.
The Banks Group, which has its Yorkshire office close to Harewood House, has a long history of property, green energy, housebuilding and mining operations across the county.
It has previously built four onshore wind farms in Yorkshire and developed housing schemes in Sheffield, Harrogate and Leeds, while it is currently bringing forward a growing portfolio of new residential developments in locations including Harrogate, Hambleton, Hemsworth, Hunmanby, Shepley and Eggborough.
Harry Banks OBE DL, chairman and chief executive at the Banks Group, says: “Yorkshire has been a key market for us through almost all of our first 50 years and we wanted to celebrate everything that we’ve achieved in the county with our local contacts, as well as to highlight our exciting future plans here.
Rob Ormrod, land director & head of Banks’ Yorkshire office, adds: “Horticap undertakes fantastic work which builds both the skills and the self-confidence of its students, and their beautiful gardens provided the perfect location for us to hold our Yorkshire anniversary reception, with the surprise message that they organised for us from Alan Titchmarsh being a lovely extra touch.”
Horticap chairman Peter Hornby says: “We use horticulture as an educational tool in a supportive and friendly working environment in which our students can develop their social and communication abilities, and we see the positive results of what we do every single day.
“Banks has provided absolutely invaluable support for our work over many years, and we were very happy to welcome them to our nursery for their special event.”