Operation ‘vacate the Coach House’ is in full swing! The Garden is currently closed Monday – Friday (between 5-18 September) to move out of the building which housed our Café, Welcome Desk and Office. We’re in the midst of the transition, surrounded by boxes and finding new homes for the charity’s worldly goods – some of which have been baffling to find buried in the office!
We’re open the weekends of 10/11 and 17/18 September and would love to see some visitors – after all it is you that keep this place going. Our popular Enchanted Garden trail will continue during these two weekends, so if you’ve yet to see the beautiful, willow-sculptured fairies, dragons and boggarts, now is the perfect chance.
On arrival you will notice a quite a difference and we are looking a little ‘temporary’, so we do appreciate you bearing with us. The new entrance to the Garden is located on the opposite side of the car park to where you usually walk down to the Café/Welcome desk. If you’ve not visited us before, as you turn right off the drive and into the car park, look ahead and you’ll see the new entrance at the far end. You’ll also see we’ve been joined by Exedra Nursery, formally based at Miserden, and we encourage you to stop by and see their fabulous range of plants and other garden goods for sale.
We currently have a temporary Tickets and Shop ‘shed’ – the building may have changed but the warmth of welcome you receive will be just the same! The Café ‘shed’ will be serving a simplified offering of hot and cold refreshments and snacks – these can be enjoyed either in the Garden or under our temporary marquee.
It is important to stress that what we currently have in place is not the finished article! We have great plans for this space but we need a little more time and money before we can fulfil these plans. When you visit you will see us hard at work over the coming months, completing the project. However, we are dedicated to keeping the Garden open to the public, so we hope you will forgive our slightly makeshift appearance that will greet you in the short-term. Maintaining and conserving this gorgeous Garden is our charity’s core purpose and our expert Garden team will be keeping up the good work throughout this time.
We’re pleased to share that we’ve upgraded our facilities today (15/09/22) with a toilet trailer including proper flushing toilets. We also have a separate accessible/baby change portable unit in place which is best described as ‘functional’ – we’re looking to upgrade this very soon too. Once again, we really appreciate your patience as we make this transition.
After 18 September we will go back to our usual opening hours for September (Wednesday – Sunday).