All aboard for...the garden!

Adam Hewitt • Last updated 3 Jul 2008 13:21 0 Comments

A NEW bus stop has appeared in Earley but these passengers will have a long wait for the Number 21.

The stop, complete with a comfy seat, is the finishing touch to the perfect destination - the new garden at the Austen House Care Home.

Prince's Trust volunteers built the fake bus stop for residents with itchy feet, while on a break from their community work in the gardens.

Ann Garrett, activities manager at Austen House Care Home in Kilnsea Drive, said: "We've got a lot of ladies who often say 'I'm going home', and want to take themselves off to a bus stop.

"Now we've got this bus stop they can go and sit down there a little while, before they decide they want to come back inside.

"Some of them say it every day - that they want to go home to Maidenhead or wherever else, and they always want to go and catch a bus.

"Very few of them had cars when they were growing up. The bus was how they got around and that's where they want to go now.

"It's just something nice for them to do, and it stops them getting upset if they can't go to an actual bus stop.

"The young people from the Trust did a fantastic job, and the gardens are going to be entered in Barchester Care Homes' competition to find the best in the country."

The seven volunteers from the Prince's Trust, aged 16 to 19, raised their own funds for equipment and materials for the improvements at Austen House as part of a 12-week course.

Team leader Sarah Flanders said the Trust gives young people not in education or employment the chance to improve their lives, and added: "We've been here at Austen House doing up the gardens, planting, weeding, painting a fence and a Spitfire mural, and other odd jobs.

"Many of the residents are asking where they can catch the bus, so the Home asked us to make a bus stop for them. It means they can come and sit at the bus stop rather than being told they can't, and after a while they're happy to come back inside again."

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This article appeared in Reading Chronicle 19 Jun 08

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