History - Plants & Minds Charity

Our History

“Always try to make sure that people go out of this gate feeling happier than they were when they came in.”

Cyril Speller, co-founder of Plants and Minds.

From a seed of an idea to a flourishing project that supports more than 120 people with life-impacting mental health challenges every week, the timeline below shows how our charity has evolved over more than three decades.

When the government closed many large psychiatric hospitals in the 1980s, a policy of Care in the Community was born. Designed to restore normality to lives, the concept inadvertently increased social isolation and exclusion once people had been returned to their communities, resulting in declines in mental health.

Pastor of St Ann’s Hospital in Poole, Reverend Canon Rosalyn Aish, noticed an uptick in the number of patients being readmitted and called for a fresh approach. Take a look at our timeline of charity milestones, which charts the evolution of a truly unique charity.

Our Timeline

1980s to 1990s

Restoring diginity to life

Rev Canon Roslyn Aish
Cyril Speller

Rev Canon Rosalyn Aish believed that people’s need for routine, structure and purpose was not being met by the new policy of care in the community. He teamed up with philanthropist Cyril Speller to launch a project where people’s needs could be met via the voluntary sector. The pair believed that realistic work would give structure to the day, a chance to make new friends and offer people with mental health challenges the dignity of working again.

1990

SWOP Charity is born

In 1990, the Sheltered Work Opportunities Project (SWOP) was born and a site was leased from Bournemouth Borough Council at a peppercorn rent to set up a commercial plant nursery (originally designed to grow shrubs for the landscape sector). Named Cherry Tree Nursery, an interest-free £1,000 loan was secured and an old portacabin donated. The site was overgrown, derelict and suffered from break-ins and vandalism, but determination triumphed over adversity and the project quickly attracted friends and supporters.

1995

Cherry Tree branches out

Initially, only half of the present site was available to Cherry Tree. Volunteers diligently cleared, drained and levelled the nursery. Water, electricity and phones were installed, along with polytunnels, buildings, beds and paths that are still in use today. In 1995, the council granted the charity the remainder of the site. Once it had been cleared, Cherry Tree expanded with a bright future ahead.

1997 to 1998

New glasshouses transform Cherry Tree

The addition of new glasshouses, which are still in use to the present day, helped to ramp up plant production at Cherry Tree and provide optimum growing conditions – while offering expanded under-cover working environments for team members. Multiple new polytunnels were constructed, to increase plant production capacity. Over the coming decades, new sustainable, eco-friendly buildings were added to the site, including the team members’ hall and nursery offices.

2001

Chestnut Nursery opens in Poole

High demand for the service at the dawn of the new millennium saw the charity take on a second site in 2001 – this time in Poole. Named Chestnut Nursery after mature horse chestnut trees that tower over the site, the former Poole Council nursery in Poole Park is steeped in history, having been donated to the borough by Lord Wimborne in 1890, as part of the formation of Poole Park. Glasshouses, once used by parks staff to grow bedding and exotics for the borough’s public spaces, are still in use today, albeit without the waterfall and tree frogs that graced it in days gone by.

2019

Chestnut gets flagship new shop

In 2019, dilapidated buildings at Chestnut were demolished to make way for the charity’s new flagship 200m2 eco-friendly garden centre shop. Featuring locally-sourced chestnut cladding and surrounded by gabion cages of Purbeck stone, the bright and airy state-of-the-art retail facility boasts renewable energy technology, accompanied by more than 740m2 of new outdoor retail facilities.

2024

SWOP rebrands to Plants and Minds

In a move to strengthen the charity’s brand and raise awareness of its work, the Sheltered Work Opportunities Project (SWOP) rebranded to Plants and Minds in 2024. The change was driven by a need to clearly explain how the charity’s horticultural therapy activities can enhance wellbeing and mental health, while promoting both nurseries as leading suppliers of top-quality, home-grown, great value plants.