A GARDEN sales building is being planned for the popular Walled Garden site at Moreton which doubles as a training college.

The single-storey garden centre building will financially assist the training programmes it runs with Employ My Ability, and may help create up to five jobs.

Plants sales are currently operated largely outdoors in the walled garden, with a small indoor provided by a basic garden shed, and also from a patio outside the café on the 5-acre site.

The site is a former kitchen garden to Moreton House, part of an historic walled garden which is open to the public and popular with locals, tourists, and cyclists.

The garden’s current use is as a home for the college, Employ My Ability, which takes students with special educational needs and disabilities and teaches them the skills and confidence to provide a pathway for employment in the community.

The skills taught involve growing and selling horticultural produce on a small scale, with an active garden centre with an ancillary café, classrooms and structures for plant growing.

A planning agent suggests that the walled gardens might previously have had a glasshouse against the remaining 3m high brick wall. The new, proposed, building would extend slightly above the height of wall, although would be partly shielded from view by being set back into the grounds.

Public comments on the proposal, 2024/01872, on the Dorset Council website, remain open until June 15th.