Start-up fund for Farncombe Community Garden

Aim

To raise funds to create the Farncombe Community Garden - including planting areas, gardening equipment, landscaping the site.

Why a community garden for Farncombe?

This project was conceived by local GPs at the Binscombe Medical Centre who were inspired by the idea of social prescribing as a way of improving people's health and wellbeing. The benefits of community gardening are widely supported by research (e.g. King’s Fund Report (2016) on gardens and health and include:

• improved mental and physical wellbeing (Farncombe is one of the most adversely affected places in Waverley in terms of the impact of COVID-19 on health dimensions Waverley Borough Council in September 2020)
• reducing social isolation (35% of our local residents live alone)
• regenerating green spaces for the public to enjoy (we plan to transform an unused field for this purpose)
• fostering a connection to wildlife and nature (we will be planting native hedges, creating a pond and having 'wild' areas to attract and increase the site's diversity and provide opportunities for fun activities)
• a cleaner and greener space to live (we plan to plant more trees on the site)
• a better connected community - we are linking with local schools, care homes, businesses and other local services so that we can make our community stronger and more resilient.

Why are we Crowdfunding?

We are so excited to create a new public space for the community in Farncombe. So far we have managed to get grants from the National Lottery and People’s Postcode Lottery to help set up some of the infrastructure in the garden, but we need to raise a bit more to make this dream a reality. We currently just have an empty field with no mains water, electricity or fencing, so we need a start-up fund to transform this space and get our garden going.

The money raised via this crowdfunder will go directly towards the garden, including:

• extensive landscaping to make the site fully accessible, safe and secure
• water connection and irrigation
• creating a pond area with a platform for pond-dipping
• raised vegetable beds
• gardening equipment
• plants and seeds

How will we achieve it?

We have the garden design, we have plenty of volunteers, we have a strategy and we have managed to secure some funding, but now we just need to crowdfund the rest so that we can get the garden up and running and open to the public in Spring 2023 (just in time for planting seeds for our raised beds!).

Please help us to create the Farncombe Community Garden for the benefit of everyone in the community.

Thank you from the volunteers of Farncombe Community Garden!

Please check out our Facebook page to keep up-to-date with how the garden is progressing.

This project successfully funded on 11th December 2022