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Tag Archives: Frendsbury Gardens


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Crowdfunding for outdoor classroom at Frendsbury Gardens

©Tom Kyle (Architect)

New Classroom at Frendsbury Gardens

The Friends of Frendsbury Gardens need you help.

We Need Your Help!

As you may already know, we’ve started a project to build an outdoor classroom in our community space. We’ve received some funding from it but it’s not enough to cover all the costs of the materials. The work will all be carried out by people in the community. To help cover the remain material costs we have started a crowdfunding appeal via Spacehive and we need your support to get to our target in the short space of time left to make this amazing dream …become a reality.

The Project

To build an outdoor space that can be used in all weather. It’ll be a place where we can continue to hold our nature and horticultural classes; local families can use get together for celebrations or have a picnic; the community can use as a quiet, restful space to simply sit and enjoy; and where we can all get together for our annual open days.

Currently the gardens are used for pre-schooler nature clubs, afterschool gardening classes and gardening classes for adults, including those with mental health support. For some it’s simply a garden that they love visiting and enjoy being in, for other’s it’s become a place of sanctity and friendship.

The garden is open 7 days a week all year round and classes go ahead regardless the weather, but with a very small indoor space, rainy days do make it difficult to run our usual activities. A new outdoor space would solve this problem and provide with shelter when it’s raining or on extremely hot days.

What You Can Do:

Make a pledge it doesn’t matter how small it is. EVERY LITTLE COUNTS and spread the word!
Thank you for continuing to make Frendbury Gardens the wonderful little oasis it is becoming

Help Build!

We now have planning permission that we received 2 weeks ago so we need your donations and offers of time as this is a community build with no former building skills required. Please watch out for our build days or get in touch if you want to be involved in building a wonderful community space. We have a confirmed architects and structural engineer so it will be a supervised build

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Nature’s Gym at Frendsbury Gardens

Nature's Gym volunteers get to work on 'live' willow hedge

Nature’s Gym volunteers get to work on ‘live’ willow hedge

The last Nature’s Gym session of the year was held in Frendsbury Gardens on Saturday.  A chill wind blew, but the volunteers stayed enthusiastic – maybe it was the thought of the tea and mince pies that were to come!  Some of the volunteers spent time weeding the beds, especially the herbaceous boarders.  A few others got to work building a ‘live’ willow hedge near the pond.   The Friends didn’t want to make it too high because people still wanted to see the pond, so it was build to act as more of a visual barrier. Hopefully, when it grows it will look natural and fit in with the natural surroundings of the Garden. It was a bit of an experiment, so we look forward to going back in the Spring to see if it has worked! The willow dome where Little Explorers holds story time looks great – so we have high hopes!

(with thanks to Lumen for the photos)


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There I was digging a hole….

The Nature’s Gym visited Frendsbury Gardens yesterday to dig out a pond that needed relining.  In parts the soil was around 60cm deep, so it was hard and exhausting work.  Using mattocks, spades and shovels, they did manage to expose parts of the liner.  Once all the soil has been removed, new liner will be put in and some soil replaced. The pond will then be replanted and hopefully home to some new inhabitants.

There is still a long way to go to expose all the lining in the pond, but they did make a good start and definitely deserved the tea time break with tea and cake!  As did the volunteers thay spent a happy few hours weeding the garden.  Frendsbury Gardens is a fantastic site and relies on the hard work and dedication of volunteers.  Weeding this Community Garden is no mean feet.