Our Impact in 2023: videos bring our donations to life

It’s been a record year of donations from the National Garden Scheme to its beneficiary charities with over £3.4 million distributed to some of the UK’s best-loved nursing and health charities.

As well as our main beneficiaries the National Garden Scheme supports a number of charities which provide funding to train and support gardeners and those who create gardens with health benefits and who promote gardens and gardening as therapy such as Horatio’s Garden and Maggie’s. Our funding also reaches community gardens across the country.

While our Impact Report sets out the value of our donations in words and pictures many of our beneficiaries have created wonderful videos which help bring that impact to life. We are hugely grateful to Macmillan Cancer Support, Marie Curie, Hospice UK, Parkinson’s UK and Horatio’s Garden for producing such beautiful films which help us say thank you to everyone who has visited a garden, opened a garden or supported a garden to open. This is what your contribution has helped support:

Macmillan Cancer Support‘s CEO Gemma Peters introduces us to the Y Bwthyn NGS Macmillan Specialist Palliative Care Unit, at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, Wales, the third specialist unit opened thanks to National Garden Scheme funding. In 2024, Macmillan Cancer Support and the National Garden Scheme will mark their 40 year partnership and £20 million donated through the opening of exceptional private gardens.

This film celebrates 27 years of partnership between Marie Curie and the National Garden Scheme, featuring Penny and Leslie, volunteers from the West Midlands Hospice. The National Garden Scheme has supported Marie Curie since 1996, donating over £10.8 million in that time from opening exceptional private gardens to the public. The garden at West Midland Hospice is one.

Thames Hospice patient, Stephen, with Volunteer and Ambassador, Graham, discuss how the hospice’s stunning gardens and diverse wildlife have an immense therapeutic effect on their day-to-day lives. Since 1996, the National Garden Scheme has donated over £7 million to Hospice UK. This is a thank you to everyone at the National Garden Scheme, and every garden visitor for everything you do to support hospice care.

That gardening is good for you is a truth that should be universally acknowledged. For Roger it’s his garden that helps him cope with the everyday stresses of living with Parkinson’s. For his wife Jenny, it’s the joy of sharing a passion for gardening with her husband and with the visitors that come when they open for the National Garden Scheme helping to raise thousands each year for nursing and health charities including Parkinson’s UK. The National Garden Scheme has supported Parkinson’s UK since 2012 and donated over £2 million in that time.

The National Garden Scheme has been funding Horatio’s Gardens since 2015 and in 2019 committed to funding 25% of the cost to complete the gardens at all 11 spinal injury units across the country. In 2023 we celebrated donations of £500,000 to Horatio’s Garden. This video gives a taster of how that money is being used.