July 2019
July is always a busy month as we prepare for our biggest event of the year, the Garden Gate Music Day. This year we hosted our fifth annual music festival at the garden. The event is always a sell out and this year we were raising funds for a much-needed new kitchen. It’s a great event and we are lucky to have so many people that pull together to make it happen. All the bands play for free, a local brewery stocks our ‘Fill yer Boots’ Ale & Cider bar, we concoct our own selection of botanical cocktails and our home-made wood fired pizzas go down a storm. It was a great day and we raised £7000
August 2019
In August we held an Open Day for the National Garden Scheme. We open the garden to raise funds for the NGS every year and this year we raised £600. The NGS supports a host of nursing and health charities and in 2019 raised over £3 million from individuals and organisations opening their gardens to the public.
We all had great fun doing some tie dye with Yemi Awosile and Open School East as part of the run up to the Turner Prize 2020… think we had forgotten what fun tie dying was!
We also got busy wood carving with TJ who came along to the garden to show us how to carve spoons and the results were brilliant. Several people who came along have now taken up carving as a hobby.
September 2019
Macmillan Coffee morning was a busy day, lots of people came along and donated some delicious cakes and we raised £105.
In September, we all had a trip to another garden close by… the Salutation Gardens in Sandwich is a beautiful garden by the Quay. The woodland area gave us some inspiration for our woodland area at the garden. After a tour we all sat in the sunshine and had fish and chips. Every year we take regular attendees of the garden for a day out, this is one of the activities that is funded from our Vegware grant.
October 2019
Every year, when Autumn arrives, we host our annual two-day Falling Leaves Arts & Crafts Festival. Local creatives come along and donate their time to host workshops. This year we had jewelry making, printing, rope making, painting, bread making and various other activities for all ages and abilities. This if a free event for the community and local special needs schools to come and get creative.
November 2019
Finally, we got our new kitchen that we raised funds for at the Music Day back in July. Our old kitchen was virtually rotten so a new kitchen has been on our wish list for some time.
December 2019
We hosted several events on the lead up to Christmas… Our Wreath Making workshops were very successful, attended by approximately 70 people over two days.
On the 18th we held our annual Christmas dinner in the poly tunnel for our regular attendees. Dinner for 40 people is a real team effort and a great way to end the year. This year we made a big effort reduce our use of plastic single use throwaway items, so homemade hats, paper chains and table decorations were made by our creatives in the Arts & Crafts cabin.
2019 has been a great year for the garden. We are so fortunate to have so many wonderful supporters. Thank you Vegware for your support throughout the year, your help makes it possible for us to host so many great community events.
