Home Leisure Time Ramsbottom retirement community launches new gardening club for homeowners

Ramsbottom retirement community launches new gardening club for homeowners

A new gardening club is proving popular with homeowners at a retirement community in Ramsbottom.

The management team from The Cottons on Factory Street decided to launch the gardening club in the summer this year, after a few homeowners began gardening in the raised beds.

The club has already attracted 10 regular gardeners who each have their own section of the planters. They all tend to their planters daily and the club officially meets once a week.

Alexandra Johnson, Sales and Marketing Director for Adlington Retirement Living, said: “The gardening club is a really good way to offer our homeowners the best of both worlds. They can enjoy gardening and growing their own flowers or produce, without having to do any of the garden maintenance jobs like mowing lawns, weeding, and sweeping up leaves.


“Some homeowners have planted flowers, and some are growing herbs, fruit and vegetables. The produce they’ve been sharing with each other includes strawberries, carrots, potatoes, beetroot, runner beans, swede, lettuces, rhubarb, cabbage and chard. One homeowner even shared some seedlings from his swede with members of our on-site team so they can grow them at home.”

The Cottons offers a selection of 57 beautiful, privately owned retirement apartments for the over 65’s, in a safe and secure environment. Homeowners can enjoy the privacy of their own peaceful and spacious apartment and spend time in the leafy gardens, which are maintained by an expert team of gardeners.

Margaret Bell, who lives at The Cottons and is a member of the gardening club, said: “I have always enjoyed gardening, but my previous garden became too much for me. Now I have a small plot on the raised beds which I can manage easily. This gives me an interest, some exercise and gets me outside meeting other like-minded people, and of course we enjoy the end product such as peas, beans, carrots, potatoes and beetroot.”

John and Marcia Braithwaite are members of the gardening club and enjoy planting in the raised beds, as well as planting their own garden next to their patio: “We enjoy gardening. We have a garden on either side of our patio that’s our own, and then the main Adlington gardens are beautiful. They’re well looked after. The gardeners come and tend to them, and we have a lawn, quite a large one, in front of us and they come every two to three weeks and cut the grass. It’s been a big relief not having to worry about doing jobs. We’ve had one or two things that needed doing and we have a very good handyman here and we get a lot of help.”

Four Adlington Retirement Living communities have won Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards for the Best Retirement Development in the UK at the WhatHouse? Awards, the UK housebuilding’s most prestigious event. The Folds in Romiley won the Silver Award in 2020, as did The Bridges in Macclesfield in 2019, Adlington House in Otley won the Gold Award in 2017 and Adlington House in Portishead won the Bronze Award in 2015.