Why I open my garden to support hospice care

After retiring in the late 2000s, Maureen found herself with an inescapable urge to keep busy. At the house she shared with her husband, Patrick, the sizeable garden led Maureen to enrol on a horticultural qualification, so that she could create an outdoor space of which she’d always dreamt. 

Years later, after 15 years of open gardens, and a personal experience with hospice care, she now believes that joining the National Garden Scheme was part serendipity, part destiny.

“I think I'm one of those rare people… when I retired, I knew there were certain things I wanted to do. My house had a big garden, which my husband Patrick and I had worked on to a certain extent. But I needed to know more. So I did a part-time horticultural qualification, and at the same time as I retired, I put my name down for volunteer posts with REACH, which places retirees into charitable organisations. 

“It was serendipity that REACH contacted me and said that the National Garden Scheme was looking for a County Organiser. I had never actually heard of the National Garden Scheme, I have to admit! But once I started doing research, I knew it was a great organisation. 

“I liked what they were doing – the idea of people opening their gardens to fund health and nursing charities. I also liked that it's a very financially efficient charity. Now when I'm giving talks to groups, I emphasise that 82p in every pound raised goes to our beneficiaries. That huge sums of money that have come out of this very simple idea of opening private gardens over the years really appealed to me.”
 

Whilst Maureen – who, along with her husband, originally came to the UK from Australia in 1978 – joined as a County Organiser for Northumberland, Tyne and Wear in 2009, it wasn’t until a few years later that she made the leap into opening her own garden.

“I just didn’t think my garden was good enough,” she says – which might sound odd coming from the person responsible for assessing new open garden applications. “But others in the team started becoming more vocal about it, and told me that my time had come!”

It’s one of the most common themes amongst garden owners, Maureen tells us, that they think their garden just isn’t good enough for the National Garden Scheme. 

“When I'm speaking to people who might be thinking about it, or I've seen a garden and I'm trying to persuade people to join, my response is that you are your own biggest critic.

“Other people aren’t going to see it in the same way that you do. You see the flaws, you see the hard work, you see the things you've overlooked. Visitors at an open garden don't see that. They just want to see something that's beautiful. You might be critical of your garden, but these people will not be.”
 

It comes as no surprise that Maureen did have one special helper at her open garden event: her husband, Patrick. She refers to him warmly as ‘the Compost King,' because of his passion and expertise in making compost to enrich their garden's clay soil.

And whilst he was ‘never a gardener,’ says Maureen, he was a great source of support, taking care of many of the key jobs on the day, from managing tickets on the gate, to organising visitor parking at other open garden events alongside Maureen.

Patrick’s unwavering support for open gardens was shared by many of the couple's friends, who, Maureen explains, all pitch in to help. “We demand a lot of our volunteers… without my group of loyal friends, I'd never be able to open my garden to the public.”

Patrick, a Consultant Haematologist with the NHS, had had professional experience of hospice care throughout his career, occasionally meeting a patient at the Marie Curie Hospice in Newcastle if they had difficulty attending hospital, or preferred to meet outside of the hospital.

He became seriously ill in 2016, when he was diagnosed with sarcoma of the lung. The following six months saw Patrick go through various cancer treatments, but in June of the following year, he chose to stop treatment, and instead aim for quality of life. Discussions moved on to what Patrick wanted for the remainder of his life. He chose the local hospice.

After a short spell at home, Patrick decided that the time had come to ask the hospice if they had a bed for him. Fortunately, they did – and he spent two weeks being cared for by their incredible staff.

“We were so lucky that the Marie Curie Hospice in Newcastle had a spot for Patrick,” says Maureen, “because that's the big problem at the moment. Not only funding for hospices, but that demand exceeds the supply. The care they gave him was phenomenal. They helped him with his pain relief needs, and little things too, like giving him massages to stop his skin from drying out. It was a level of care I don't think you'd get anywhere else.”

Maureen reflects on Patrick’s decision to enter the hospice – which he made not just for himself, but for Maureen too:

“Patrick was so practical. He knew that if he was at home it meant I would be doing the daily caring and because of the demands on home palliative care at home there might be delays in getting the nursing and medication needed. At the hospice the care is immediate and available 24 hours a day. That reassured both him and me, and left me simply to fulfil my role as his wife."
 

In the early days of her involvement with the National Garden Scheme, Maureen says she never once considered that one day she or her husband might need to actually use one of the services that their open gardens helped fund. 

“I suppose like most people, we had this vision, Patrick and I…we always thought that we'd grow old together, at home. 

“But I didn't think at that stage – whilst I was so actively involved with the NGS – that I would be using the services that the National Garden Scheme helps fund. That brought another dimension to what I did with them, because I knew how important that funding was, and even since 2017, the financial circumstances of hospices mean that funding has become more important.”

Before he died, Patrick was keen to make sure that Maureen would be keeping herself busy once he was no longer around. 

“Patrick was so practical. He died in 2017 and I became an NGS trustee in November that year. I'd been approached earlier about it and I was doubtful about taking it on, along with the County Organiser role. I remember he said to me, ‘No…you will need it. Take it.” He just knew that I’d always need to feel busy.

“He said that at a stage when he wasn't sure when he was going to die, but he knew it would be fairly soon. He died in the August and I became a trustee a few months later. He was absolutely right. I needed that extra work.”

In many ways, Maureen’s work with the National Garden Scheme, as a County Organiser, and as an open garden owner, is enmeshed with Patrick’s memory. Maureen recalls one poignant memory from the time before he joined the hospice as an in-patient:

“It was at one of our summer open gardens, in the July. Patrick managed to come downstairs and quite a few of his colleagues had come to that opening to see him. He was able to make it outside and sit with them all for a while. 

“And for me, that was extremely important.”
 

Unlike her fellow County Organisers in other areas of England, Maureen's open garden strategy in the north-east follows a different path. 

“The number of people who contact us are actually very few. Geographically, we're enormous. But our population is very small, relatively. So we actively have to go searching. We rely on the professional gardening community up here to give us tip-offs about where they’ve seen a nice garden!”

In recent times, entry criteria have adapted to more modern ways of living – certainly compared to what they were when the charity formed in 1927. Now, Maureen explains, it’s much less about stately homes set in huge grounds: 

“Open gardens can be someone opening their allotment, it can be a community garden, it can be a small suburban garden. For several years until the owner became ill, we had a garden in a little village called Washington, in the north-east. She had basically what amounted to a small courtyard, probably smaller than my sitting room. But she was a phenomenal plantswoman. It was a three-dimensional garden, and she’d covered every inch of the walls and overhangs…it was chock-a-block full of plants. 

“Most open gardens visitors come for the plant interest. Small gardens often work very well in this regard because people will see them and say, ‘oh, I could do that.’ Village openings – where neighbours get together and open their gardens as one – are fantastic and visitors love them.”
 

With 15 years of experience under her belt, we asked Maureen what she gets out of opening her garden:

“I get a beautiful garden because it makes me work harder than I would normally if it was just me and friends seeing it. And it gives you a focus. 

“We used to have an elderly gardener on the scheme, who died two years ago now. She was born in 1927 and was our oldest gardener here locally. She needed a lot of support to open her garden in the last few years, and I had asked her if she thought she should stop. Our whole team had to go in to support her, because it was so important. And she said to me, ‘Maureen, if I stopped gardening, I would stop personally.’ It gave her a purpose to strive for every year. And she kept going until she was 98.

“I've been involved in charities for so many years. I love raising money for charity. My husband always said to me that I was completely shameless when it came to asking people for money if it's for charity!”

Thank you to Maureen for sharing her and Patrick’s story.
 

“If you’re willing to consider opening your garden or might thinking about it, all you need to do is contact your local community team (County Organiser). All of the details are on the website.

“But it can also be helpful to go along to other open gardens, and have a look at what people are doing, to see what's involved, and speak to the garden owners. 

“The garden owners are the ones that will tell you about the amount of work involved, and the satisfaction they get from it. 

“We've had really loyal garden owners in this area from before my time – people who are still opening for us. And people like that will be able to tell you all about the satisfaction that they get from it. 

“Okay…it's hard work! I’ve just had my open garden, and you do sometimes have a moment, because you're organising food, you're organising the garden to be looking its best, all sorts of stuff.

“But by the evening, I could really feel how worthwhile it had all been. People always are very complimentary about the garden and saying thank you for it. It really brings people happiness.

“In the last couple of years, the demographic of garden visitors has been changing. We're getting lots of young families, as well as the usual visitors, 50 and older. That’s really nice. 

“It's a really cheap day out for families, quite honestly. My garden is three quarters of an acre in the main garden and an acre and a half of woodland. It's £6 entry, and you can spend the whole afternoon there. We do pizza and a complimentary glass of Prosecco. We actually sold out all 100 of our pizzas …the pizza oven was going full blast. We sold copious amounts of cake and tea and coffee too. 

“I think people who are thinking about getting involved should come and look at an open garden first. You’ll see how it all works, and how we can get more young people involved by offering them a fun way to spend an afternoon or morning. 

“I've discovered that there are WhatsApp groups locally, and they’re great for sharing information about your event, or if you need helpers.”