🌿 Join Us for Open Gardens Day!
Click here for a 2025 printable map
2025 Google map available via this link: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1zuCbvudrfAe_Jj5BVfVChvZgtt3PPe4&usp=sharing
On Open Gardens Day, we’re celebrating gardens of all shapes and sizes.
This isn’t about perfect lawns or pristine borders—it’s about sharing ideas, appreciating works in progress, and inspiring a deeper connection with nature. Whether your garden is wild, tidy, or somewhere in between, it’s the love and creativity behind it that we’re here to honour.
What to Expect?
🌻 Inspiration Galore: Explore a variety of gardens and gather ideas for your own green space. From native plantings to creative wildlife habitats, you’ll find endless inspiration to make your garden come alive.
🗣️ Community Connection: Connect with fellow garden enthusiasts, share tips and tricks, and forge new friendships within our vibrant community.
How to Get Involved?
🌿 Open Your Garden: Whether big or small, your garden is an invaluable part of our community. Sign up to open your garden and inspire others with your passion for gardening and wildlife.
đź‘€ Explore the Gardens: Grab a map and embark on a self-guided tour of the participating gardens. Discover hidden gems and marvel at the beauty of nature in our neighbourhood.
📢 Spread the Word: Help us spread the word about Open Gardens Day! Share this event with friends, family, and neighbours who share a love for gardening and wildlife. For more information and to sign up your garden, contact Bobbie Sunderland Bobbie.Sunderland@emersonsgreen-tc.gov.uk
What our Home Owners say…
BS16 6AW – Over the past five years, we’ve transformed our plain front lawn into a haven for wildlife. A pond now supports damselflies, dragonflies, and—this year—our first successful tadpoles. We’ve added a small herb and veg area, bug hotel, log piles, and pollinator-friendly plants. Our back garden, once part of a quarry, features a wild upper level full of birds, bees, and butterflies, while the main area includes native plants, a mini pond, and more homegrown produce.
BS16 9EZ – Our garden is a hard working family back garden home to 2 young children, an old cat and a brand new flock of chickens. Alongside play spaces, and chicken coops we garden organically and are exploring permaculture. We grow vegetables, plant for pollinators and have multiple wildlife ponds, dead hedges and log piles to offer a range of habitats. We’re also in the process of turning our front garden from a car park into a wildlife haven. We’d love to talk to you about gardening generally, no dig gardening, and bokashi composting. Or you are welcome to a quiet wander round and we’ll leave you alone!
BS16 5LQ – We’re doing a lot to support wildlife in our garden. We use no chemicals and focus on planting for pollinators, including native wildflowers, as part of the Big Bee Hotel Experiment. We also grow plants that provide food for birds throughout the year. Our garden features two ponds—one newly added—with frog houses and a few resident frogs. A living roof tops our potting shed, and we’ve planted several small trees, including apple, pear, and plum. We’ve added bee hotels, a bug hotel, rotting wood, a leaf pile, and a hot compost bin that produces compost in just over a month. Two swift boxes are mounted on the front of the house, and we’ve included berried plants to support birds and insects. Our future plans include adding climbers for birds and butterflies, a bat box, making the space hedgehog-friendly, and expanding the nettle patch.
BS16 7BF – We’re a military family who move every two years so very hard to get established, but we do what we can for wildlife and the kids! We inherited a very bland garden of turf surrounded by bare brick wall and progressively dug a border, put some flowers in tubs and baskets, planted some climbers, included a bird bath, bird house, bird table and feeders, let some wild patches grow, stacked some logs and started making our own compost. We’re due to move again this summer and hopefully our successors will build on the start we’ve made.
BS16 7GA – A mature garden developed over 27 years, where birds, insects and people feel at home.
BS16 7DQ – It started with a badly made birdbox and slowly my enthusiasm grew. More habitats added, a pond, hedgehogs holes and so on. However this wildlife garden is definitely work in progress and might be somewhere those thinking about trying some wildlife gardening would see how to make a start – even if they don’t have a badly made birdbox.
BS16 7DA – Our garden has to work hard—it’s a place for my two kids to let off steam, and a much-needed retreat for me after a long day. We welcome nature in every way we can, but it has to share the space with us; it’s a garden for everyone. I must have explained this to this year’s bluetits more than once and they eventually agreed. Now they’re happily feeding their chicks while I try to find space for yet another irresistible plant!
BS16 7AP – A garden that is only two weeks old but a haven for nature in a small space.
BS16 6QX – A wild garden in an urban setting. Filled with plants from seeds we find and scatter and loved by birds.
We need all kinds of local gardens to participate in order to run the event.
Why Participate?
🌱 Embrace Imperfection: Your garden doesn’t have to be flawless or finished to participate. In fact, it is better if it isn’t, we want real life – not false perfection. Whether you’re a seasoned gardener or just starting out, we welcome gardens at all stages of development.
🦋 Focus on Wildlife: We’re passionate about creating gardens that are beneficial to local wildlife. Whether it’s providing food and shelter for birds, butterflies, or bees, every garden can make a difference in supporting our local ecosystem.
🌿 Celebrate Diversity: From established gardens to works in progress, every garden has a story to tell. By opening your garden to the community, you’re sharing inspiration and encouraging others to embark on their own gardening journeys.