Summer Update!

With the garden so established now, it has been exciting to see the impact of the growing season on so many aspects of the garden - whether it is the wonderful sensory garden filling out in its second year, the new growth on all the fruit trees, the development of the pond or the cycle of produce from the fruit and veg areas, it has been as exciting as ever to be part of this wonderful project! And it has been fantastic to see the garden open up to our community, as our wonderful building has enabled so many groups to come and use our space. From yoga classes, to visits from local Brownie and Beaver groups, to Lambert Lodge being the venue for our local community nursing teams to hold one of their meetings, the garden has been loved by everyone who has been able to visit.

This update needs to start with a huge 'shout out' to Clare, one of our most regular volunteers, who decided that 10 000 steps was only for starters and raised over £1000 for the garden by walking 100 000 steps nonstop! That worked out at over 44 miles from start to finish! She was so encouraged by the support she had on the way, and we are so encouraged by Clare being part of the garden as such an enthusiastic volunteer - and such an amazing fundraiser! Thank you Clare!!

We are also hugely grateful for some wonderful donations we have received in the last month. Most notably this was through being chosen as the legacy garden for a beautiful RHS garden called Healer's Hollow at the RHS Hampton Court Garden festival. The garden was designed by Jude Yeo and Emily Grayshaw of Inspired Earth Design and the garden they created was both stunningly beautiful and wonderfully peaceful - a real Healer's Hollow! Our amazing team of volunteers worked incredibly hard on the day after the show, and came back to Farncombe with over 1000 plants for our garden! So many of them have already been planted in gaps in the sensory garden or to fill out both our woodland area and the cutting garden, which is absolutely bursting with colour!

We were also thrilled to take part in Go Godalming's Godalming in Bloom competition again this year, and were thrilled to be awarded the Special Award - we have always thought there was something special about the garden, but it's lovely for this to be recognised by our community in this way!

We have also had some very generous donations of beautiful stones to help us build up the area around our pond, to naturalise it in its location and allow planting around it. These have been kindly donated by Geoff Gardner from Manor Landscapes and local landscaper Matt Harmsworth. Thank you so much! We've got some in position already, but there are plenty more to move across to the pond! Now there's a challenge - but somehow the team seems to like challenges!!

If you've not been to the garden in a while, do pop in and see how it is looking - it is always changing, so you need to keep visiting in order to keep up with all the developments! Our open sessions remain every Wednesday afternoon 1-3pm and every Friday and Saturday morning, 10-12 noon. We would love to see you there!