The ActivGardens Team has won the BBC Radio Suffolk Make A Difference The Environmental Award at the awards ceremony in Dance East on 16th September.

ActivGardens Team is a group of ActivLives charity volunteers and staff who consistently protect and conserve nature and the environment while bringing local people together in Suffolk to help them learn skills in horticulture, gardening, beekeeping, honey making, and woodworking. They all work together in three community gardens: People’s Community Garden and Chantry Walled Garden in Ipswich and Belle Vue Park in Sudbury. The community gardening projects they all lead and implement respond to social need in urban Ipswich and rural Suffolk, working in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the UK.  

One of the projects of the ActivGardens Team is the Grow Well Eat Well that provides more than 60 families access to freshly picked produce from the community gardens at the local Top Up Shop in Ipswich in 2025 alone. Through this project, different activities for children and older adults and for individuals with special needs were also conducted to help them appreciate how important gardening is in nature and environment conservation and protection.  

The team also supported 240 primary-aged children and 48 secondary school children in learning about food-growing, gardening, nature and beekeeping last year. Four events they organised engaged local families in growing and cooking from organic ingredients.  

Thank you to everyone at BBC Make a Difference Awards for recognising the staff and volunteers at the People’s Community Garden, Chantry Walled Garden and Belle Vue Park in Sudbury.