In 2015, when the local council decided to withdraw its funding, a dedicated community group known as The Friends of Furzeham Green took responsibility for maintaining the three flower beds located in the middle green area. Their proactive efforts ensured that these flower beds were not neglected or lost. If you visit on most Sunday mornings, you will likely encounter a committed team of volunteers who diligently water and remove weeds from the beds to keep them in good condition.

Beyond caring for the flower beds, The Friends of Furzeham Green actively collaborate with Torbay Council to ensure the children’s play equipment on the top green adheres to stringent health and safety standards. They promptly report any damage or issues, and the community group works closely with the park ranger to facilitate replacements or repairs. Moreover, the park ranger assists in addressing any concerns regarding damaged trees.

It’s also worth noting that Swisco still maintains one of the flower beds on the middle green. When time permits, they generously extend their assistance by watering one of the flower beds The Friends of Furzeham Green maintains.

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As part of the Libraries Unlimited charity, Brixham Library strives to positively impact people’s lives. Offering resources, experiences, and a welcoming space for individuals to meet and connect. We aim to introduce ideas, imagination, creativity, and knowledge that enrich lives and help Brixham remain a thriving community.

Over the past year, we’ve achieved a lot:

Continued to host regular, free monthly community breakfasts to combat social isolation, and we secured funding for another year.

Introduced a hugely popular seed swap.

Hosted craft, social, and cultural events for people of all ages.

Participated in community celebrations, including stories and crafts for the Pirate Festival and a display on Peace as part of the town’s VE Day commemoration. We also created our “Peace Tree” for this event, where people added leaves with their wishes and thoughts about peace.

Held several events for adults and children using recycled items.

Collaborated closely with other community groups. For example, we publicized and served as a collection point for entry forms for the Brixham Horticultural Society’s Annual Show, encouraging members of our regular art and craft groups to enter with great success.

We held a “mini green fingers” event, where participants decorated plant pots, made seed bombs, and planted flowers, vegetables, and herbs.

Our Friends Group

Free monthly talks are held, organized jointly with our Friends of Brixham Library group. These talks bring local community groups and organizations together to share their work.

Our Friends Group runs monthly coffee mornings, funds and maintains a defibrillator for public use, and stocks and maintains the beautiful flower boxes at the front of our building.

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The Brixham Urban District Council founded St. Mary’s Park in 1940, creating a large open space bordered by mature trees. Since forming our group in 2005, we have actively worked to maintain and rejuvenate the surrounding area. We established a 2-meter wildlife corridor around the perimeter, allowing it to re-wild; this area now hosts many established trees, and we have documented 57 larger specimens.

Green Flag Award

For the second consecutive year, we received the Green Flag award for 2024/2025. Judges will assess the park for its third year on June 12, 2025, for the 2025/2026 award. We strive to ensure a continuous display of flowers throughout the year, starting with snowdrops and winter-flowering jasmine in January.

Brixham Rotary again generously donated 1,000 crocus bulbs and helped us plant them, supporting their Purple for Polio campaign and creating a vibrant entrance to the park. Near the entrance, we’ve added fritillaria and wood anemones to the bluebell wood. On the left side, we’ve incorporated recycled polyanthus, which bloomed again this spring, complementing the daffodils and primroses.

Wildlife friendly

As the park lies on a bat flightpath, we’ve installed bat boxes and bird boxes to encourage nesting. In fact, we even rescued a baby owl that had fallen from its nest!

The group operate as a low-cost community group, utilizing recycled or homegrown plants from cuttings or divisions. We make our own compost, use coffee grounds as a slug repellent, and irrigate with recycled grey water. The three raised beds are currently in the process of being refurbished and they provided a wonderful display last summer. In 2025, we planted a new shell bed, and this year, we aim to plant another after clearing an overgrown hedge.

Our wildflower meadow is underway, albeit a bit late this year due to invasive species appearing before planting. Despite this, we’re optimistic it will last longer into the autumn.

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Local residents at Dixon’s Land Allotment have formed the Brixham V.E.G. community growing group. An accurate acronym, these Very Eager Growers hit the muddy ground running, transforming a 6m x 10m plot of oxalis and grass into a garden that provides for people and nature.

This year, a very active group of volunteers arrange who will weed, plant, and water to keep the garden rotating well. V.E.G. have collected free seeds from Churston Farm Shop, received donations of many free seedlings and vegetable plants, and collaborated with SWISCO again to get free soil. More volunteers have also joined us this year.

Willow Weaving

In a collaboration with the Life on the Edge project, we were able to deliver a willow weaving workshop making obelisks for peas to grow up for the bees. This was great fun and very interesting, and three children and eight adults got involved. One obelisk has been kept at the allotment, and participants took the rest back to their home gardens to help bring more bees to those locations too. So, overall, we held a fabulous, free workshop at the allotment. This was the first workshop we ever held, and anyone in the community interested in helping wildlife could attend.

Wildlife Gardening

V.E.G. collaborated with Life on the Edge again, this time with the help of Brixham Community Partnership, to create a brochure for Brixham called Wildlife Gardening in Brixham. This brochure encourages people to take actions in their own back gardens to attract more wildlife and invertebrates. These brochures were delivered to all the businesses and charities in Brixham, including Men Sheds. Men Sheds made us a bird box from instructions in the brochure in exchange for some rhubarb, marking another lovely collaboration with the local community.

Community Engagement

Gave rhubarb to people in the community – specifically, people the community builder has been helping to get out and about and encouraging to volunteer for VEG.

Exchanged seeds with Brixham Library through their “seed swap“. We took some of the seeds the community had donated and gave them some back from our stash.

What’s Next

For next year, we plan to attract even more volunteers and hold more regular meet-ups. We want to involve a school in visiting the allotment to see what we do, and have a few children participate in an activity and get involved with the growing. We also wish to collaborate even more with external projects like Life on the Edge and to hold more workshops like the willow weaving workshop.

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We created a small green oasis in the center of town. The garden incorporates materials and objects relevant to Brixham. We repurposed, recycled, repaired, and repainted a boat to create the central planter. To maintain a nautical and environmentally themed atmosphere, we use shells as ground cover, and lobster pots, buoys, and fish netting contribute to the overall aesthetic. The project promotes wildlife conservation by planting bee-friendly flora and providing safe havens for small creatures. Dunnocks nest here, bees and other insects frequently visit, and we even saw a mouse at one point.

Involve The Children

Local children painted scallop shells and pebbles, and we incorporated them into the garden. This year, we also completed our beach hut-inspired compost bin enclosure, which adds to the nautical theme.

Face The Challenges

Being in the town’s centre brings its own challenges. Graffiti, vandalism, rubbish, and the bed being used as a dog toilet all create problems and frustration for the volunteers. In the coming year, we must try to connect more with the wider community to make people aware that this behaviour isn’t acceptable.

From comments on our Facebook pages and from people we talk to while working in the garden, we know that most people respect and enjoy the small area we have created. This makes our efforts well worthwhile.

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The gardens at Poundsgate Close don’t just look stunning; they also create a community hub that benefits all the close’s residents, with the health and social benefits of gardening truly driving this garden. Some residents struggle to get out, but they can still enjoy looking at the gardens from their windows. The garden aims to give pleasure to all the residents.

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We aim to continue maintaining the Indigos Play and Ecology Centre as a magical place for children and families in Brixham. At Indigos, children should have the freedom, time, space, permission, and opportunity to play outdoors with other children.

This year, as a newly appointed Torbay Geopark Associate, we actively developed events. Through these events, children and families can learn about one of the most extraordinary places on earth – TORBAY!

Inquisitive About Indigos

Commissioned Weird Sticks, a participatory arts organization, to work with families and young people. They created a new installation sculpture from willow and natural materials to celebrate 400 million years of geological history. The amazing Geopark Gateway now provides a very special entrance to the woodland area. These ‘Inquisitive about Indigos’ sessions provided opportunities to work with natural, sustainable materials while encouraging and stimulating informal discussion about the geology of the Torbay Geopark and its importance as a UNESCO site.

Supported the Geopark Festival 2025 with a ‘Let’s Go Geo-Parking’ day. This event attracted over 60 visitors, who worked with local sculptor Elisabeth Hadley to create little clay creatures. These creatures will be fired in a kiln, ready to become long-lasting inhabitants of the Geopark Gateway.

Peas For Bees

Continued to work collaboratively with ‘Life on the Edge‘, a local Heritage project, to help restore very endangered species. The Asrus Club successfully planted and grew ‘special peas for very rare bees.’ They then took them to the coastal footpath at Shoalstone on a glorious evening and transplanted them, where they continue to thrive.

Forest School

As well as providing regular play opportunities for children after school and during the holidays, we also deliver a weekly Forest School session for home-educated children. For some children, especially those with SEND, home education isn’t working well, and home schooling isn’t elective. Forest School offers them a lifeline. Although this is currently a free opportunity, the parents and carers are dedicated fundraisers! This, in turn, has led to the development of home education peer-led research with Exeter and Plymouth universities. We hope that properly academically verified research findings will be recorded, giving credibility to the issues. This way, different, more appropriate approaches like outdoor learning and Forest Schools will emerge.

Child Friendly Communities

Generally across the UK, access to play in natural spaces is diminishing, and more children are lacking an emotional connection to nature. But this year, the Director of Play Torbay was invited to a special meeting of the Torbay Council’s Overview and Scrutiny committee. They discussed the launch of the Torbay Play Improvement Strategy, which has a key aim for ‘children and young people to feel part of their community, be safe and live well and make greater use of our natural and cultural assets’. It was also agreed that the Play Improvement Strategy should be linked to the development of the UNICEF Torbay Child Friendly Communities initiative.

An exciting time for Play Torbay and the Indigos Play and Ecology Centre!

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Moorings Reach was constructed almost 25 years ago on the site of Upham’s Boat Yard.

Upham’s Boat Yard played a significant role in the Brixham community, providing employment and stability through boat building. They even constructed the famous Mayflower II, which now docks at The Memorial State Park in America, attracting numerous American and British visitors. However, Upham’s Boat Yard faced financial difficulties after orders decreased, leading to its closure and the loss of valuable boat building skills.

From the ashes of Upham’s Boat Yard, Moorings Reach emerged as a housing and apartment complex after developers purchased two plots of land. The two plots adjacent to the Moorings Reach steps posed the only problem. In 2002, with council permission, they entrusted these plots to two volunteers who transformed them into distinct gardens. To protect the gardens from vandalism, Moorings Reach Management enclosed them with railings and lockable gates. One volunteer meticulously developed and maintained a cottage garden over the past ten years.

Ever Evolving Garden

The boat garden has undergone a transformation. A local artist created a replica of the Mayflower and placed it within the garden, surrounded by ropes. We have installed information boards that share stories and highlight the ship’s significance for Brixham. These boards, provided by Brixham Museum, offer historical insights about Brixham and the people involved in building the Mayflower II. We hope they will evoke fond memories for older Brixham families, preserving their connection to the boat building heritage. They will also serve as a source of enchanting stories for the younger generation of Brixham families.

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Mary Thompson, founder of Pride in Brixham (Volunteers), started the group in 2006 after noticing neglected, dog-fouled areas around the harbour. After meeting with the harbourmaster, a few people helped clean up rubbish, then decided to create a garden. They continued this work, adding more gardens, and by 2017, the group had 20 core members. These members maintained the gardens, painted, and refurbished benches, railings, phone boxes, and post boxes.

The gardens entered in It’s Your Neighbourhood include the Grenville Garden, Bay View Garden and the Mayflower Garden, all situated along the South West Coast Path route from the town towards the marina.

Reworking Bay View

Now, our knees make it difficult to access the top of one of our gardens, Bay View. Fortunately, the Life on the Edge project offered their help. So, on April 30, 2025, Stuart, Ben, and Joe from Life on the Edge, along with seven Pride in Brixham members, worked extremely hard to make the Bay View garden more accessible. Nearly 100 already-established native wildflower plants were planted in the newly landscaped garden, just along from the Marina office. We are so grateful for Life on the Edge’s help. We are currently re-working the Bay View Garden, and this will be an ongoing project for some time.

Pride In Brixham continue Mary Thompson’s vision (she retired from running the group three years ago after 16 years). Our members usually gather on Wednesday mornings (though we can also meet on other days) to tend the gardens and perform any necessary maintenance. We love it when locals and visitors stop to chat and tell us they love the gardens; it makes all our effort worthwhile. We all love Brixham and are always happy to welcome new members.

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The outdoor swimming pool at Shoalstone dates back to 1896 and saw significant development in the early 1900s, evolving into the facility we know today. Originally operated by the local council, the pool was closed in 2012. In response, the Shoalstone Pool CIO was quickly established and has successfully managed the pool ever since.

The team at Shoalstone Pool organise a wide range of community events and activities, such as Wellbeing Days, Yoga sessions, Doggy Swims, Twilight Swims, Music events, and Creative Art days. Despite these vibrant offerings, the pool faces ongoing challenges including unpredictable weather, year-round cleaning and maintenance, the need for continuous fundraising, and the difficulty of recruiting qualified lifeguards.

What has been achieved:

• 2023 winners of the BBC Radio Devon Make a Difference Awards (community group)
• Awarded over 500k through our Save Shoalstone from the Wave campaign from Governments Community Ownership Fund to make vital repairs to the NW Corner of the pool and replace the deep end base.
• A full program of weekly activities including yoga, tail-chi & mindfulness walks.
• Created rewilding areas on our green spaces to help wildlife.
• Working in partnership with the prison service to help maintain areas of Shoalstone including painting, weeding and general maintenance.

What is still to come:

• More events and wellbeing activities.
• Continue to promote Shoalstone Pool as a destination to visit.
• Move forward with our plans to have an area of 21 beach huts to bring in vital revenue and create a small terrace area for the public to enjoy.
• Build a paddling pool and hopefully a sauna in the old concrete beach huts.

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