Wildlife and Birdcare Nature Recovery Project CIC is exhibiting at Four Oaks for the first time when the show takes place on 5-6 September. CEO Sammy Holman gives the lowdown on this project.
"In the height of Covid as the country was shut down and as people we took to the open spaces for our daily exercise and realised the amount of nature and birds that surrounded us, we took to our gardens to feed the birds, buy hedgehog homes and bug hotels as a past-time. Wild bird care saw a 73% sales increase during these times. But in the background covid also bought massive challenges for buyers as suddenly container prices went through the roof and they had to find British alternatives. As it happens my ma had asked me to go and make her some bird houses in our garage at home. I made 30 of them and she was so impressed told me to put them on the internet and see the results.
"I got a call from the Blue Diamond buyer Tom Scribbins, who we met in a car park in Derby and thought our work and story was amazing and supported us with an huge order for then 20 centres and today 46. Blue Diamond group have proven that if a back story can be told and the products are well placed, British and FSC accredited the costs might be more, but the quality was so much better. Ma sadly did not get to see the results of her suggestion as she passed unexpectedly. But her legacy lives on in what we are doing today, both our dads were master carpenters and we are using their tools for the programme, and ma was a special needs teacher all her life and would be so proud of our skills and learning centre.
"Our success comes with development, and Tom has continued to work with us to develop various lines with them in wild bird care and nature recovery and we have stepped up to improve our quality, speed and manufacturing requirements to fulfil the order values that they needed. Not alway have we been the fastest and there is a very good reason for that, you see all our products are made by people with autism and learning disabilities. We have grown from 3 people in a garage during lockdown to an 8,000 sq ft workshop where we churn out quality biodiverse, eco-friendly and sustainable habitat boxes every single day.
"Recognised by GLEE for an award in their ESG category we won that award with pride in 2022. Since the time we met with Blue Diamond we are now far reaching to other garden centre groups, farm shops, landscapers, developers and have been recognised as a provider of habitat homes for the Governments Biodiversity Net Gains Solutions that will become mandatory very soon.
"Our team of 10 workforce plus 20 learners from Strathmore College in Stoke on Trent is a strong team of foragers, makers and printers who all club together to produce not only habitat products but a brilliant range of seeds cards, seed balls, wildflower growing kits, greetings cards, merchandise and gifts all relating to nature and flowers.
"We print a wide range of t-shirts, hoodies, caps, jumpers and bags where retailers can choose their own images or use ours, we can brand and everything is printed by us, we make cushions and t-towels and anything our retailers need or might want.
"In year we have made and shipped over 20,000 habitat boxes and made over 30,000 seed balls and 600,000 greetings cards. But we need more work, we need and want to be in more retailers. Being an autistic CEO my voice is often not heard, I knock on doors and can waste hours and hours of time just tying to get in front of the right person. But when we do, the answer is always the same, ‘what you do Sammy is fantastic’ and we are fantastic, we are all special needs and have additional needs and have all clubbed together thrown our talents on the table and produce the most beautiful work. We make giant feature biodiversity planters, giant bug hotels and the all wildlife, animal, bird and insect homes.
"It’s just so hard to get HEARD and thats why we are attending Four Oaks as we missed Glee this year due to a road accident which was unfortunate, but we hope to come away from Four Oaks with another award, so far we have won gold at BBC gardeners live, we have won our ESG award and have been invited to attend Chelsea flower show in 2024 for which we are going for gold with our wild garden for disabilities.
"If you are a garden centre, farm shop, retailers and need habitat homes for your nature and wild bird areas. Consider us as you will not only receive incredible quality work, but also be supporting young people who have additional needs to gain their working wings and fly.
"You can contact Wildlife and Birdcare on www.wildlifeandbirdcare.co.uk 07740 528628 or 01782 229129 ext 1."
