National Garden Scheme

The National Garden Scheme opens thousands of beautiful gardens every year to help support unpaid carers.

Carers Trust’s partnership with the National Garden Scheme

The National Garden Scheme is Carers Trust’s longest standing corporate donor, and through funds raised from garden visits over the past 28 years, we have received almost £6 million from the National Garden Scheme to help support unpaid carers. 

The National Garden Scheme raises large sums of money every year through these garden visits for caring and nursing charities, of which Carers Trust is one of the beneficiaries. 

The money Carers Trust has received from the National Garden Scheme has helped us to support the UK’s seven million unpaid carers. This includes increasing our reach and ability to offer advice, information, respite care, and financial support to carers in their local communities as well as through our policy and campaigning work.

Visiting a National Garden Scheme garden 

There’s an amazing selection of gardens opening for the National Garden Scheme in 2024. From extensive country gardens and small, ingenious plots to allotments, community gardens and many others. For a small entry fee you can visit National Garden Scheme gardens and in the process you will be supporting carers through Carers Trust.

You can find out more about visiting one of these beautiful gardens on the National Garden Scheme website. 

You can also enjoy an array of Virtual Garden Visits

Get involved!

Money raised from garden entry fees is shared out by the National Garden Scheme with its partner charities, including Carers Trust. So your visit will help our work to support unpaid carers across the UK.

Find out how you can get involved by visiting the National Garden Scheme website today.

Gardens and health

Gardens and Health Week will be 4th - 12th May 2024, and every year the National Garden Scheme launches   The Little Yellow Book of Gardens and Health, which is packed with stories and case studies from garden owners, garden visitors and beneficiaries, including Carers Trust.

The link between gardens, gardening and being outdoors with health and wellbeing has long been understood. And extensive research, including some undertaken by Carers Trust, has shown that spending time outdoors can significantly improve mental health and wellbeing. Carers Trust is therefore keen to use this learning in our work with carers by encouraging them to find time to spend outdoors.

Every year, The National Garden Scheme’s Gardens and Health Week focusses on the positive impact of social prescribing; helping patients to improve their health, wellbeing and social welfare by connecting them to community services.

It may not be a surprise to many that gardening, and visiting gardens, is the one of the most powerful forms of social prescribing.

More than 85% of National Garden Scheme visitors report that being in a garden has a positive impact on their mental wellbeing. 

An unpaid carer from Care for the Carers, a Carers Trust Network Partner, can attest to the positive mental health benefits of visiting gardens.

"A couple of years ago, I had blood pressure issues and hypertension so for me personally it’s important for me to get relaxation and things like this are ideal for relieving stress.”

Carer

Carers Trust Network Partners

If you are a staff member from a Carers Trust Network Partner in England or Wales and are interested in finding out how you can link with a National Garden Scheme garden, then please get in touch. 

Contact Zoe Cutten, our Senior Fundraising Executive.