Opening For The NGS - A Great Experience!
Never again!
The words are echoed by many a garden owner the morning before the first time of opening for the National Gardens Scheme: you have no idea whether the weather will be as bad as forecast – or maybe they got it wrong! You don’t know if anybody will turn up: ‘What if no-body comes......?’
But more often than not, the weather does hold up (sort of) and the people do indeed arrive promptly at opening time – or even earlier – and the afternoon goes with a swing. And at the close of the day, when all the visitors have gone home and a celebratory glass is being drunk (with the Chinese takeaway that you have promised your helpers), Mrs Garden Owner will turn to Mr Garden Owner and whisper those immortal words: ‘Shall we do it again next year?’
The good news is that it becomes easier each year, so that you can positively look forward to it thereafter. But why is it that such an apparently stressful event should prove so ‘more-ish’? Well, there is no doubt that personal pride – making sure it is all as good as it can be on the day – is a motivator. After all, we are all human!
Many garden owners have said that, by opening for the NGS they have joined a ‘club’, and it is true that as organisers, we do our best to help people with advice regarding any difficulties they encounter when planning. Frequently, established garden owners will offer help to other local gardens, if needed on the gate etc, so it is indeed a very supportive environment.
It is also true, that as the years go by, it also becomes a great way to renew old friendships with visitors, many who come year after year, including, in my case many who are CGT members.
And the teas...aaah!
Where does the money go?
In Cheshire and Wirral, during 2009, we opened around 100 gardens (including those in ‘groups’), collected, via teas, plant sales and at the garden gate, around £125,000, certainly a record for us, despite some pretty gloomy weather. It confirmed our expectation that in a recessionary year, more people would stay closer to home for their leisure time. Again our visitor numbers, at over 22,000, were a record.
The money is pooled nationally and decisions made by the trustees about its distribution. For some years now, the NGS has had a policy of supporting charities that provide nursing and social care within a community environment. Thus Macmillan, Marie Curie, the hospice movement and Crossroads Care have all benefited from our work in recent years.
Locally, Macmillan has made a significant investment with the money provided from the NGS. In 2008, they opened a specialist cancer treatment and support unit at Leighton Hospital, Crewe, in co-operation with the NHS Trust locally, using a massive half of all the money that they received that year from us. It somehow becomes more real, when translated into bricks and mortar, although, as the largest single donor to Macmillan nationally, we know that we make a difference by funding posts on the ground across the country.
We also donate money, in smaller amounts, to a range of other charities, some of them gardens related, including the National Trust. At our stipulation, the latter use the money received to fund bursaries for about a dozen student gardeners per year, who, it is planned will be the next generation of National Trust Head Gardeners, although some do move off into private gardens as well. Their training has a very local link – because the academic part of their three years of study is done here in Cheshire, at Reaseheath College.
How did it all start?
Even at the outset, the NGS had roots in the North West. In late Victorian time, William Rathbone of Liverpool, a well know business man (there is still, of course a Rathbone’s in Liverpool) and philanthropist employed a group of women to go out into the city to provide basic nursing services to the poor. The idea was taken up elsewhere in the country by other philanthropist, encouraged by Queen Victoria and, apparently, Florence Nightingale (again, apparently, a ‘celeb’ of the day). Eventually, the Queens Nursing Institute emerged as a charitable body to run the whole organisation nationally, they became known as the District Nurses, and they set about the problem of raising funds independently. They stumbled upon the idea of opening gardens of the great and good, and charging visitors a shilling per head. From the beginning, it proved a great success and even in its first year (1927, they raise over £160,000 from over 600 gardens!)
The District Nurses were subsumed into the NHS after the Second World War. The garden opening venture eventually became a charity in its own right, but to this day, continues to donate money to the QNI, which now, of course has a different remit.
And the NGS Today....
The NGS has evolved over the year to reflect, in many ways the changes in society. We are always delighted to be able to open larger gardens, as we always have done, in the traditional English style, but we now see more smaller gardens, both traditionally planted but also the exotic, as well as community gardens and, of course allotments: there is considerable interest in the latter, especially amongst younger ‘urban’ families.
The weather has been a real difficulty and frustration for gardeners in the last couple of years, but we are encouraging more and more, to open for two consecutive days to mitigate the weather risk for essentially the same amount of preparatory work.
Inevitably, we see a ‘turnover’ in gardens: it seems to be an unavoidable consequence of people coming to gardening generally later in life. Nevertheless, the people of Cheshire and Wirral (and that is BOTH halves of the new Cheshire!) continue stepping forward to enquire if they can open for us. Long may they continue. We couldn’t exist without them!