Mark Hobster at the Alzheimer’s Society contacted the VAL Helpline to request volunteer support for an elderly gentleman whose neighbour had cut down a tree which had resulted in branches falling on his garden and the family needed help to remove them.
We contacted one of the registered volunteers in his area, who had mentioned an interested in gardening and had a current DBS check. Charly didn’t hesitate to offer her support and immediately got in touch with the family and carried out the task the following day.
Charly’s comments:
“After receiving Pauline’s telephone number I gave her a call to discuss what she needed doing. She explained that her dad has Alzheimer’s and kept asking her to clear his garden, but she wasn’t able to do it by herself. She asked when I was free and we checked the weather for the week. As her dad was eager to have the stuff cleared we decided to do it the next day. I took my hand saw, clippers and gardening gloves, and a big garden bag I had to take what we cleared away.
The task involved breaking up some branches and scooping up leaves from a trimmed down plum tree, to clear David’s veg patch. I had explained to Pauline that I owned an allotment and she was more than happy for me to take the garden cuttings away for my compost. I also took 9 or so bags of lawn cuttings that the council couldn’t collect until the end of June due to high demand.
I arrived at 2pm on the Thursday and was home again by 6:30pm, with the two of us, plus some help from David, it didn’t take long at all. I enjoyed it and had a great time chatting with Pauline and David and had an enjoyable afternoon, it felt really good to help them out and to see how happy and relieved David was when it was finished. He was very happy to have his veg patch clear again and we discussed what he was planning to grow next year.”
Comment from Mark Hobster-
“This is absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much. I would like to thank Heather from VAL for sorting this out. Pauline and her were getting desperate and Charly, well what can I say. Pauline and her dad were really struggling to find a solution to this and you have answered their prayers, I can’t thank you enough and I will be mentioning this to the Society. It will have made a real difference to them. The world needs more people like you and Charly and I can’t thank you all enough. Thanks again”