THIS year’s Hidden Gardens event was the most successful ever, raising £5,000 for the Frome Festival and a further £4,500 for local charities, organisers have said.
Hidden Gardens took place on Friday 12th to Sunday 14th July and is an event within Frome Festival where keen gardeners in the town open their outdoor spaces to the rest of the community to explore, with many also selling plants and refreshments to raise funds for local charities.
“The numbers are in and we can confirm that this year’s Hidden Gardens event was the most successful ever, despite the weather!” says one of the organisers, Andy Jones, “A really wet Friday meant that many people didn’t get round as many gardens as they may have hoped but the following two days more than made up for that initial disappointment. That said, with over 40 gardens opening across the three days of the event, few people probably managed to visit all of them.
“This year we sold 843 hard copy programmes and a further 268 online downloads, making over 1,100 sales in total. After costs that provided nearly £5,000 to support the Frome Festival, a really valuable contribution when funding for arts and community festivals is in decline. In addition, many of our gardeners offer plants, refreshments or crafts for sale in support of their preferred charity and that generated well over £4,500 for organisations like Fair Frome, Active & In Touch, WHY and many others. A big thank you to both the gardeners and the visitors who make Hidden Gardens of Frome such a great event.
“It’s all happening again next year on 12th to 14th July, so if you are thinking it might be fun to open your garden as part of the 2024 event, please do get in touch. If you can persuade some neighbours to join in, that’s even better as we always find that local clusters of gardens get higher footfall. You can find more information and contact details on our new dedicated web page https://fromefestival.co.uk/hidden-gardens/”
