London Southend Airport & Environs Joint Area Action Plan Issues & Options Paper

Trust Links is a local charity that uses horticulture as the centre of its work with people who have mental ill health. We use our gardens and also St Lawrence Orchard that we maintain on behalf of Southend Council.


The Orchard site is especially important to us as it :

- gives a wider range of opportunities to our clients
- is very useful as a peaceful and tranquil place and an entirely different experience than our more bustling community garden

It is also important to the local ecology, forming part of Southend biodiversity strategy. The maintenance is deliberately low impact in order to encourage bio diversity.

A number of local organisation also use the orchard for relaxation and study of nature.

The low and medium growth options would appear to leave this site unaffected but the high growth option involves re-routing of Eastwoodbury Lane and would appear to threaten the future of the orchard.