BTCV Green Gym

Description: The BTCV Green Gym provides physical activity and benefits to mental well being through gardening and local environmental improvement. Participants take part in activities such as planting trees, growing food on allotments and creating nature areas. There are over 70 Green Gyms in the UK. (www.btcv/greengym.uk)

All BTCV Green Gyms will have the following features:

As a minimum, offer weekly (approximately 3 hour) sessions of practical activity throughout the year.
Are endorsed by local health services, including doctors and nurses, who recommend people to take part in BTCV Green Gym.
Follow health and safety procedures, including a risk assessment, first aid provision and warm-up and cool-down stretches to prevent injury.
Aim to become self-sustaining. BTCV trains the participants so that they form their own community group which takes full responsibility for running the BTCV Green Gym programme. These groups are run entirely by volunteers, independently of BTCV, after the first 2 years.

Target-groups and amount of visitors: The target group will vary, depending on the needs of the local community where the project is located. In general, the target group are:

Inactive people (people doing less than 30 minutes of physical activity five times a week, which is the Chief Medical Officer’s recommendation).
People who want to get fitter, but don’t like traditional gyms or sports centres.
People with minor mental health problems, such as stress, depression or anxiety.

In addition, BTCV has just launched a ‘School BTCV Green Gym’, where children who don’t take enough exercise, including overweight children, can take part in BTCV Green Gym as an after-school club or as a physical education lesson.
Each BTCV Green Gym session can accommodate approximately 12 participants, so
each BTCV Green Gym involves approximately 40 participants a year.

Research on Health effects: The health benefits have been independently evaluated by the School of Health and Social Care at Oxford Brookes University. A summary of the evaluation of the pilot projects is available at:
http://www2.btcv.org.uk/gg_summary.pdf
A National Evaluation began in 2003, which has found that BTCV Green Gym is socially inclusive and successful in introducing traditionally excluded groups to environmental conservation volunteering, whilst keeping an emphasis on health. Key findings of the interim report, based on 538 participants are:

47% are unemployed
29% of participants have no formal qualification
9% are recommended by health services
64% do not take part in any other voluntary activities
67% are completely new to conservation volunteering
The daily activities of 14% are compromised by their physical health
20% find their daily activities affected by their mental and emotional health

The National Research demonstrates the mental and physical health benefits. Those joining BTCV Green Gym with the poorest physical and mental health show the most improvement. 90% of participants who join with well below average scores for mental and physical health show an improved score over a time period of approximately 7 months.

Health effects noticed by staff and users:

Enabling sedentary people to increase their levels of physical activity by providing an alternative to traditional gyms and sports centres which is easily accessible.
Preventing mental and physical illness by providing people who are at risk of ill health, such as those who are isolated, with opportunities for social contact, and exercise.
Providing contact with nature which has been shown to have a restorative eff