Diagrama Community Services at Duckyls Farm, near East Grinstead is celebrating the arrival of 105 native broadleaf saplings, generously donated by the Woodland Trust, an important step in their ongoing mission to restore the land, improve safety, and create a thriving environment for people, livestock, and wildlife.
Diagrama Community Services at Duckyls Farm offers Day Opportunities for people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities, sensory impairments, and acquired brain injury. The new saplings have been planted along a boundary where a deteriorating old fence was recently removed, marking the start of a long-term project to replace hazardous fencing with natural, wildlife-friendly barriers.
Diagrama Community Services is committed to removing old, unsafe fencing and replacing it with living hedgerows and dead hedges, measures that simultaneously protect animals, increase biodiversity, and create natural wildlife corridors. Both options are not only safe but also provide natural barriers and shelter for livestock while creating routes for smaller mammals, birds, and insects. This will help boost biodiversity and create a safer, more enjoyable environment for everyone who lives and works here.
Residents and people supported through the farm’s Day Opportunities programme played a central role in planting the saplings. Service users including Cameron, Jason, and Caspian helped mark out the planting area and prepare the ground.
Steve Shill, Senior Project Lead at the Woodland Trust, said: “The Woodland Trust’s Free Trees for Schools and Communities scheme was delighted to support the Diagrama Foundation with their tree planting ambitions. The planting of 105 native broadleaf trees at Duckyls Farm will have a hugely positive impact on people and nature for years to come.”
Native broadleaf trees such as downy birch, hazel, holly and goat willow are crucial to the UK’s ecosystems. Their seasonal leaf fall enriches the soil, helping create diverse habitats for fungi, insects, and wildlife.
Keri Strugnell, Care Farm and Community Manager, Diagrama Community Services added: “This generous gift from the Woodland Trust means a great deal to everyone at Duckyls Farm. The new trees enhance our landscape and offer the people we support the chance to play an active role in restoring and caring for our environment. Watching these hedgerows grow will mirror the growth we see every day within our community.”
The project forms part of Diagrama’s long-term commitment to nature-based activities, sustainability, and meaningful involvement for the people they support.
To find out more about Diagrama Community Services visit www.diagramacommunity.org.uk
About the Woodland trust
The Woodland Trust free trees initiative strives to inspire people to come together, plant trees, and make a positive difference. They have so far supported the planting of 17 million trees by schools and community groups since 2010 and have given away more than one million trees each year thanks to the generosity of their partners Sainsbury’s, Lloyds Banking Group, and Simply Health. They are now taking applications for free trees to be delivered in Spring 2026.
About Diagrama Community Services at Duckyls Farm
Diagrama Community Services, which operates at Duckyls Farm, is for people with a learning disability, physical and sensory impairment, acquired brain injury and/or autism.
The Community Services provide a choice of meaningful, enjoyable occupational opportunities and activities, supporting people to develop skills that, promote independence, transfer to employment and be used in their daily lives.
The life skills activities include looking after farm animals, growing vegetables, fruit and flowers, making bird boxes and hedgehog houses, repairing and maintaining fences, cooking, painting, drawing, online safety and managing money.
About Diagrama Foundation
Diagrama Foundation is a Kent based charity that supports vulnerable children, young people, and adults to live their best life.
Diagrama has a Supported Living Service across Bromley and Mid Sussex, three homes for adults with learning disabilities in Orpington, an eight-bed care home for adults with learning disabilities in West Sussex with a Community Services Programme a fifty-bed care home for the elderly with nursing and dementia needs in Essex, and a fostering and adoption service in the southeast. Plus, a 100 acre property offering farm and craft day Services cross West Sussex.
- The Supported Living Service, cares for 33 adults with learning disabilities, in seven schemes across Bromley and one scheme in Mid Sussex, helping them to develop skills and confidence to live in their own house either on their own or with others.
- At Cabrini House in Orpington the charity promotes the development of core skills for 23 adults with learning disabilities so that they can lead independent lives integrated within their community.
- Duckyls Farm, a 100 acre residential care home in West Sussex for residents with learning disabilities, allows the charity to explore the physical, mental and social skills and benefits that working with animals and in nature can offer to people with a learning disability.
- Diagrama Community Services at Duckyls Farm is a day care provision for people with a learning disability, physical and sensory impairment, acquired brain injury and/or autism
- The team at their nursing and dementia care home, Edensor Care Centre in Clacton on Sea, support vulnerable residents to live life to the full.
- Diagrama’s voluntary adoption agency and not-for-profit fostering service cares for children who wait the longest for homes in London, Kent, Sussex and Surrey.
Many vulnerable children and adults don’t get the support they need to develop their true potential, but the Diagrama team know that when someone has time and belief invested in them, they come alive, because that investment has made them feel valued and worthy.
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