Our focus this week has been on re-opening the Garden so you can all come and enjoy it again. We’ve made a number of changes to ensure everyone’s safety, including online advance booking to limit numbers, changes to the route into and around the Garden and closure of some areas. For more detail and to book, click here. And so far, we’ve been delighted with the response, so we hope to open again in future weeks. Currently we’re opening Friday and Saturday 10-3 but we hope to extend this in future weeks, dependent on our staff and volunteers.
We’ve had a busy couple of weeks opening for plant sales only since garden centres have been able to operate again. Our brilliant nurseryman, Jeff, has been providing us with a topup of eyecatching fresh plants each week and they have been selling like hot cakes! This week’s arrivals are no different…
Our trustee Marion Mako has recently recorded another short piece about the Garden – this new one focuses on the Red House and Shrubbery. So if you want to find out more about this building and its surroundings and see them with new, knowledgeable eyes, then this one is for you! Click here to watch.
Down in the Kitchen Garden, Roger has had to get the irrigation system out as the hot, sunny weather continues. He has been working to his regular manifesto of mowing, strimming, watering and weeding so the Garden is accessible and looking good enough for you to visit. There’s still plenty going on in the polytunnel and greenhouses, too, with the tomatoes making very good headway. Roger will shortly be off for a while for a well-earned rest, and Jasper our Assistant Head Gardener will take over.
We were pleased to feature on BBC Radio Gloucestershire on Tuesday of this week, as part of an item about the proposal for an additional bank holiday in October. Their reporter Francesca also talked to Roger about what he’s been up to in the Garden – well worth a listen as part of the Anna King show.
Our volunteers continue to keep us going, helping out behind the scenes both from home and now onsite. From ordering plants to financial modelling to processing invoices to writing articles, they have been essential to keeping our charity afloat over the past weeks – we’re so grateful to them all. In fact our featured image on this post was taken by one of them, Adrienn Bencsik, last Friday.
And of course, if you don’t yet follow us on social media, that’s the best way of keeping abreast of the latest developments – links via the bottom of our home page. And to donate to support our charity during this difficult time, click here.