Northern Lily Community Interest Company provides horticultural, nature conservation/ connection projects, and Paddle Sports across Greater Manchester. During the period August 2024- August 2025 Northern Lily CIC has benefitted the community in the following ways We have continued to develop our flagship site at Grass Roots, Failsworth M35 0LE a formerly derelict site owned by Oldham Council into a thriving community space for communities to enjoy a wide variety of activities including bike Library and social rides, goat therapy, nature activities, horticulture training and paddlesports. We have been working with the National Trust to develop the Sky Garden Challenge delivering multiple workshops on how to grow for food, nature and wildlife on balconies and ground floor areas across Greater Manchester. We have also taken part in judging the competition and presenting awards to participants. We won two national awards- Soil Association ‘Organic in Communities’ Award 2025 and Gardena and National Allotment Society ‘Best Community Plot’ Award 2025. We also won a regional award from RHS and North- West In Bloom for Community Engagement and Level 5 Outstanding for our community garden and orchard. During this time, we engaged we have 4000 participants and provided 12,800 Meals worth of fresh fruit and vegetables and donated it to residents through community harvests, and social meals. We designed, and planted four Coronation Community Orchards with local residents, councillors and community organisations across 4 public sites in Oldham adding over 100 new fruit trees.

Our stakeholders are residents, people accessing the activities and projects, local councillors, local enterprises operating on site including The Orchard Project Charity, Green Creations CIC, Into the Wild Creatives, Moston Cycling and Walking and funders including Oldham Council, Local Housing Associations Great Places and First Choice Homes Oldham, National Trust, Life for a Life Charity, Canal and River Trust and National Lottery. We involve participants in regular feedback and evaluations of our activities to help us understand how we could improve our activities and meet the participants needs more effectively. We discovered that people enjoy learning horticulture skills enabling them to grow their own food and increase access to fresh food and staying physically active through regular gardening activity. Our social meals where we cook and eat together are very popular and communities enjoy not just the healthy meals but the connection with people from different ages and backgrounds. Many come say they feel less isolated and more connected to their communities particularly older people and refugees and asylum seekers living in nearby hotel. We learned that people with low incomes the fresh food we were providing was their only access to fresh, organic food in their diet due to cost of living crisis. We discovered participants health and mental wellbeing benefitted from being outside in nature, particularly for children who would otherwise stay indoors playing on consoles, and those who lived alone or displaced who were socially isolated and experiencing loneliness. Planting Orchards and making use of public space has enabled communities across Oldham to connect to nature locally learn new skills around tree planting, pruning and mulching. Our paddle Sports Litter picks have enabled people from aged 12-65 to get involved in fun activities for nature conservation action as well as water safety skills and discovering nature on the waterways. People have said being involved has given them pride in taking care of their neighbourhood and helped them get physically active. This feedback has enabled us to design projects that engage people from all backgrounds and ages in our work.

No remuneration was received

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration