A dedicated gardening couple has created Open Gardens, whose core aim is to promote town and village open garden events.
The criteria for entering your event
- Town or village open gardens events supporting charities or local causes
- Main town or village open gardens events supporting NGS charities
- Individual or small groups of gardens where the admission money supports charities or local causes.
In short; your event must have as its main focus a garden or gardens that will interest visitors and give proceeds from admission, plant sales etc., to charities or local good causes with clear statement as to where events proceeds are directed.
The Open Gardens website is well constructed with the ability to search for open gardens by County, A-Z, weekend, date or use an advanced search by garden name or region.
About Open Gardens
We all know the effort required to organise an Open Gardens event and the creators of the website were involved in organising their own village’s event for many years whilst also opening their own garden. It’s fun, it’s enjoyable, but it’s time consuming and tiring.
The problem they faced was a simple one – how do you find out the dates of Open Garden events in your area and so avoid a clash of dates? Even the village next door proved hard, it might as well have been the other end of the country.
Until posters started to appear, or notes in the local newspaper, event dates and times were unknown – all very uncertain.
Solving the problem
A website aimed specifically at the smaller organisers, those volunteers who bring together gardeners and gardens, plant enthusiasts and hobbyists, Hosta lovers and Pelargonium fanciers – the melting pot of Middle England that is Open Gardens.
This website should be a valuable tool to help your efforts both in publicising your own event and finding out about other events near to you or indeed elsewhere in the country.
Please check the Open Gardens listing to ensure that your event is in there. If it isn’t, please add it (even if this year’s event has passed), or contact your local organisers and get them on board. If you’re not included, people won’t know about your event!
