Residents at Ingle Court on Beverley Road, along with their house manager, hope to make the area a place for everyone to enjoy.

The large garden includes eco areas such as log piles made from dead trees to attract butterflies and insects and a special recycling area. There are also flowers – 5,000 daffodils were planted for spring – and vegetable patches. More flowers and vegetables are being nurtured in the greenhouse and the profit made from selling this year’s produce to residents will buy next year’s crop.

Dave Morris, house manager at the development, said most of the work had been done by a team of four, three residents and himself. It took the team three weekends to do most of the work such as build the greenhouse and create the vegetable beds. Most of the garden was built from left-over construction materials.

Mr Morris said: “We got permission to take materials out of the skip. The vegetable beds are made from old scaffolding boards for example, it’s amazing what we can do with rubbish.”

Other environmental projects in the garden include collecting rainwater that falls on the greenhouse and collecting kitchen waste and garden waste in special composting bins; this will be used as compost in the garden next year.

The garden has been a big success with residents, staff and visitors.

Mr Morris said: “It keeps everybody active and there’s a lot of supervisors! I don’t really know anything about gardening but I’m learning from the others, who are expert gardeners, as we go along. We are very proud of what we have done. It’s an enjoyable job, the best job I have ever had”.

The development, run by McCarthy and Stone, opened in June last year so residents still have summer projects to look forward to. Ingle Court will be hosting a special garden party at the end of this month.