With a good team of volunteers in place, we created a to-do list to get started.

#Swindon #volunteering #volunteers #garden #greenhouse #teamwork

A quick time travel to the present to assure everyone that our gardeners are *not* being neglected while work is being done - temporary beds were set up in the front of the museum site to ensure that we can still grow veg this year.

Most of our produce is donated to local food banks.

#community #gardening #vegetables

To build, we must demolish. While we applied for initial funding for supplies to create our new community garden, some digging took place (October 2025) to see what was underneath - a cobbled path! By December, we were also starting to dismantle the old greenhouse and vegetable beds.

#volunteering #GardenRenovation

Getting permission for a new building takes time, especially if you're a charity with no regular source of financial support (and you need a long lease from the local council, who owns the site).

Now that the former cowshed / allotments area was free, we decided to redevelop the area. It was perfectly functional, but not many museum visitors tended to spend time there. We spoke to the volunteers, gardeners or otherwise, to find out what was needed / desired, and we decided on a completely new layout, accessible to as many members of our community as possible.

Planning a new building is a big job, why not totally overhaul our gardens as well!

#CommunityGardening #Lego #community #BigProject #BigPlans #gardening

Our plan had been to construct a new building where the old cowshed once stood. It would require a *lot* of work, as it was listed. And then nature gave us a sign — a big storm one night in February 2025 took down a number of Scots Pine trees in our copse area, leaving what is now a blank rectangle of land, just beyond where everything is listed.

Our plan now is to build something in that space!

#NewBuild #community