Garden Centre

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

National Garden Scheme

Every year NGS gardens across England and Wales welcome over half a million visitors. Most gardens which open for the NGS are privately owned and open just a few times each year. Few people realise that through this more than £2 million each year is raised for nursing, caring and gardening charities. Most of these 3,500 gardens are privately owned.

The NGS has a long and worthwhile history - in 1859, a philanthropic Liverpool merchant, William Rathbone, employed a nurse to care for his wife at home. After his wife’s death, Rathbone kept the nurse on, but asked her to help poor people in the neighbourhood. The local need was so great he bean to raise funds for the recruitment, training and employment of nurses to enter deprived areas of the city.

This was the beginning of District Nursing. By the end of the 19th century, the idea had been taken up across the country and, with the help of Florence Nightingale and the warm approval of Queen Victoria, the movement became a national voluntary organisation responsible for setting standards and training nurses.

By 1926, the service, now renamed the Queen's Nursing Institute (QNI), set up a new fund invest in more training and to give pension support to retiring nurses. A Council member, Miss Elsie Wagg, came up with the novel idea of combining our national obsession with gardening with raising money for this valuable work.

Labels: garden secrets, national garden scheme

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:09 AM

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