Here's an idea

Surrey Community Development Trust houses vulnerable single people in hostels and shared houses. At our best-value review, one of the project managers said he'd obtained a bench for the garden of a shared house and got great feedback from residents.

It's nice for them to have somewhere to go outside and socialise together. It's also a non-threatening place if one of the staff wants to go and have a chat in informal surroundings.

Our area teams made up a list of what we needed and where. They brought it up at regular house meetings, and we put something in the newsletter about it as well.

The grounds of all our properties are maintained, but furniture is extra to what we do so we decided we would fundraise for it separately. I wrote to garden centres and didn't get a fantastic response because they are deluged by requests, but Wyevale Garden Centres gave us a voucher for £200 and a 10% discount.

A member of staff who ran the London Marathon gave us £500, and the manager of B&Q in New Malden gave us a 20% discount, which helped a lot. Then I was looking on the Britannia Building Society website and found out that they help local organisations: I spoke to the PR manager and they gave us £500.

I've bought 17 heavy-duty plastic garden chairs, 12 picnic benches and five sets of two chairs, a bench and a table. They have been spread around 18 properties.

We still need to get some more furniture, so we will be continuing our fundraising.

During the summer we had barbecues and parties for residents and we got most of the garden furniture in time so we could use it on the day. It was good to see it getting used immediately and appreciated.