Open crisis?

Founded in 1927 to support district nurses, the National Garden Scheme is now the most significant charitable funder of nursing in the UK. So how is the charity dealing with the loss of its primary fundraiser?

- Philippa Pearson

Let’s backtrack. It’s late winter and the National Garden Scheme is getting ready to launch the 2020 garden visiting season giving unique access to over 3,700 exceptional private gardens in England and Wales. This year’s rich portfolio includes 585 new and 308 returning gardens planning to open, giving the largest increase of new openings for a decade for the organisation. The NGS raises impressive amounts of money for nursing and health charities through admissions, teas and cake. Last year was a bumper year, with over £3m raised. But when you rely on 90 per cent of your income from garden openings, having all your eggs in one basket can be a fragile economy when the unexpected comes along to change that.

‘I should have known this year wasn’t going to be a good one,’ says George Plumptre, chief executive of the NGS, ‘when we got off to a poor start with our winter snowdrop openings as many were affected by a run of bad storms.’

Like all of us, news reports of the Covid-19 pandemic started to hit home when it was clear that it wasn’t just happening abroad, but was now spreading to the UK and it was likely that things were going to dramatically change. On March 22, George announced that the charity’s trustees had decided that all National Garden Scheme gardens would be closed to the public until further notice. This was the first time in the charity’s 93-year history that all the gardens have been closed. Even during the Second World War and the 2009-2010 swine flu pandemic, many gardens remained open.