Author Archives: Lauren St Hilaire
What do you get when you join forces with one of the most fantastic, life saving charities in the North East? The ability to share learning, training and help each other to spread the word of our shared charitable values, helping the people in our community who need it the most.
The Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS) paid us a visit on 24th April for a day of training simulations on site at The Alnwick Garden. The ability to train HEMS doctors and pre-hospital emergency paramedics in such a unique environment allowed GNAAS to set up bespoke scenarios within our contemporary visitor attraction.
Both The Alnwick Garden and The Great North Air Ambulance Service are charities and rely on visitors, donations and corporate support to deliver critical services to the people of our region. GNAAS are not NHS funded and bring pioneering pre-hospital care to severely injured or ill patients every year. It costs the service £8.5m annually to keep flying and at The Alnwick Garden, we opened our doors to support the team on site with the ability to continuously develop new techniques, maintain gold standard medical practice and train in new surroundings.
Gordon Ingram, Head Of Operations and Senior HEMS Critical Care Team Paramedic, at The Great North Air Ambulance Service said “The partnership with The Alnwick Garden is important because it allows us to have ease of access to environments that would possibly catch us out when we arrive on scene. We’re incredibly thankful to the team at Alnwick Gardens and Lilidorei for letting us come along for the day, and we’re looking forward to seeing where this partnership takes us.”
Innocent Smoothies have kindly donated thousands of seeds (literally) too many to count, to be used in our Alnwick Garden Roots and Shoots programme.
Their generous donation will supply the programme with seeds for two years, ensuring that children live a healthy and happy lifestyle.
Our Roots and Shoots programme is delivered to up to 200 school children in Northumberland, with 10 different schools participating each year. It is delivered in partnership with Northumberland County Council and aims to reduce obesity levels, through educating children about healthy eating and lifestyles. Each school are given an allotment plot and learn how to grow and tend for vegetables through the various stages of growing season , with an outreach session in school to ensure there is a legacy of learning.
A huge thank you to the team at Innocent Smoothies for their generosity and helping us ensure we can educate children around the need for healthy eating for many years to come.
Our Lilidorei Education Visit is a teacher-lead initiative based in the magical kingdom that is Lilidorei at The Alnwick Garden, supported by our bespoke school Story Telling by our Story Keeper, our Lilidorei Quest Challenge and physical play on Elfwin Drin. Free Fridays are available for Northumberland’s first, primary and middle schools during term time and are being made even better by the kindness and generosity of our friends at Kelloggs and Kellanova.
Behind the scenes of the picturesque Alnwick Garden water features, Poison Garden, Labyrinth, Lilidorei slides, clan houses and many other wonderful experiences, there is a hard-working charity that seeks to support those in our community who need it most. Using the proceeds from The Garden to maintain the site, and more fundamentally to deliver on our charitable objectives, The Alnwick Garden strive to reduce social isolation, improve well-being and support our most vulnerable community members. It is therefore, so important for us to work with partners, and suppliers, who share our values and are striving to make a difference to people in the community who need it the most, cue the fabulous team at Kelloggs and Kellanova!
Kelloggs and Kellanova are kindly donating a whopping 800 breakfast cereal bars, including co-co pops, rice crispies and frosties for all of the children taking part in our free school Fridays at Lilidorei. The breakfast bars will be distributed from the first Friday after the Easter break onwards and will be a welcome treat for children who are ready to use their two most magical super powers of play and imagination.
Kellanova have also recently attended the first Grow Business Club event at The Alnwick Garden where they kindly shared their sustainability journey with attendees keen to learn best practice from a large global organisation.
Simon McLeod, Business Development Executive at Kellanova said “It’s fantastic to be involved in such a great event, The Alnwick Garden first GROW Business Club which aims to create a hub for networking, sharing ideas and promoting sustainable growth. It was great to be able to share Kellanova sustainable commitments and show some of the great work already being done with our incredible brands in reducing the carbon footprint and working towards achieving net-zero by the end of 2050.”
