Trust reveals exciting new plans for house and gardens

Chamber member Chiswick House & Gardens Trust has lots to celebrate having unveiled innovative designs to develop community facilities on site, being awarded £50,000 as one of 21 Rewild London Fund projects to transform a woodland and had a visit from BBC London to share their plans.

The Trust’s plans include creating a new learning hub, volunteer facilities and artists’ studios and turning an unused and overgrown 17th century walled garden into a fruit garden. Cedar Yards, the new creative and community campus at the heart of Chiswick House & Gardens, will enable the Trust’s volunteering and community activity to grow, create and sustain creative employment and support local entrepreneurship through the creation of affordable creative workspaces.

In 2023 the Trust worked with more than 50 community groups to support nature-based learning and wellbeing for more than 2,300 local people, but demand for its popular community and learning programme now exceeds what the Trust can currently offer.

Xanthe Arvanitakis, Director of Chiswick House and Gardens Trust, said: “We are excited to be reworking ‘back of house’ areas to fulfil local needs and bringing these historic spaces back to life. This ambitious project has been designed to directly impact the wellbeing of our local community as well as enhancing cultural and creative enterprise activity in London Borough of Hounslow. By creating more public green spaces for local people we can expand our learning and community programme which is currently running at capacity. With the introduction of affordable workspaces for artists and makers we will foster a local creative economy and generate much needed new income for the Trust.”

Cedar Yards Community & Creative Campus includes the Learning Hub, a new carbonpositive indoor space enabling horticultural and creative learning activities for 7000+ participants annually, alongside office and social space for staff, gardeners, and volunteers; a new Volunteer Base to support more than 200 volunteers; the Fruit Garden will transform a currently unused and overgrown late 17th century ‘secret’ walled garden to provide a new garden for local groups, schools, and families to participate in horticulture-themed activities; and the Creative Campus will convert the currently underused historic back sheds and stables to create affordable workspaces for up to 100 artists and makers.

The proposals have been submitted to the council’s planning department and the Trust hopes to obtain planning permission by early summer.

The Trust is also one of three projects in West London to have been awarded a grant from the Rewild London Fund, as part of the scheme’s bid to help make the capital more resilient to climate change. The Trust has been awarded £50,000 for the Chiswick House & Gardens Trust Woodland Wilderness transformation.

The grant will help Chiswick House & Gardens begin to transform 3.5-hectares of two existing woodlands into species-rich, biodiverse areas. The first step will be to establish a baseline through ecological surveys to identify species with low populations to increase, and high population species to protect and enhance. The project will plant at least 100 trees and up to 250 shrubs.

The Trust welcomed BBC London on site to find out more about the Cedar Yards project. Rosie and Xanthe showed a BBC journalist around the Fruit Garden and Learning Centre, explaining how the new developments will provide opportunities for the community. www.chiswickhouseandgardens.org.uk

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