The charity garden is starting to grow again - Liz Stewart

After two years of uncertainty, charities are hoping that 2022 will bring more stability to the sector. Like every business in the UK, fundraising organisations have had to adapt to the constantly changing landscape as the country has shut down, re-opened and shut down again in successive waves.

Liz Stewart is National Organiser of Scotland’s Gardens Scheme, which has been raising money for charity through garden openings since 1931.

Plans have had to be made, remade and then reconfigured again to cover all possible outcomes and there are signs now of fatigue within voluntary organisations as staff and the people who give freely of their time to support them are now flagging under the demands that have been placed upon them, although the resilience, determination and innovation of our volunteers have remained an inspiration.

There is a squeeze on finances too, with more charities chasing less funding. Like many charities, my own organisation, Scotland’s Gardens Scheme, which has been raising money through garden openings for a wide range of good causes for more than 90 years, has seen our income devastated and, with almost all openings cancelled in 2020, we had to dip into our reserve in order to keep running. We were incredibly fortunate to have that resource behind us, having been supported in the past by generous legacies.

But challenge can also bring reward and in some ways the pandemic has also moved us forward. We used the time that would normally have been spent working with garden owners arranging charity open days, to improve our social media presence and as a result we widened our audience to include people who we weren’t reaching through our traditional guidebook and leaflets. The outcome is that we now have a new generation of visitors, volunteers and also of garden openers, willing to open their plots to the public in support of their own local charities and those to which SGS commits funds.

We also took advantage of the lockdowns to introduce advance booking systems and card payments. More than 400 gardens open every year in support of our fundraising and delivering a card payment system that would work at every garden gate turned out to be a highly complex operation, but now having trialled it we know how it works and where it is needed.

The demand for a card payment system was driven by one of our volunteers, who was firmly behind the project and determined that it should be made to work. And this is where being a charity is such an advantage because volunteers bring passion, energy and a huge range of skills to what we do.

Our volunteers have proved themselves to be highly-flexible and when they couldn’t open their own gardens they switched to filming them and posting them on-line, which in turn found us a worldwide audience. When the rules relaxed, they contrived ways to open their gardens safely, thus giving pleasure to many thousands of people who have enjoyed visiting gardens that range in size from small suburban plots to great estates. And as a charity it has been a privilege to be involved in something that has brought people closer to nature when they most needed it, as well as fulfilling that sense of community that has proved to be vital while the whole country has struggled.

What has surprised me most of all, however, is that despite the uncertainty and the constant reworking of plans, very few of our dedicated district organisers, their local teams and the garden owners themselves have given up and our guidebook for 2022 is as crammed full of beautiful gardens to visit as it was before the pandemic. Now all we need is for the sun to shine and our work of raising funds for The Queens Nursing Institute Scotland, Maggie’s and Perennial, as well as hundreds of local charities, can start again.

Liz Stewart is National Organiser of Scotland’s Gardens Scheme, which has been raising money for charity through garden openings since 1931.