## **Gerddi Bro Ddyfi Gardens Annual Report April 2024 – March 2025 Reports for small non-company charities** 

**Charity Name:** Gerddi Bro Ddyfi Gardens 

**Date when we adopted current legal status:** 23/06/2022 

## **Registration number:** 199433 

**Address:** Gerddi Bro Ddyfi Gardens, Plas Grounds, Machynlleth, SY20 8ER 

**Trustees:** Sally Richards,. 

**Committee members:** Katherine Hudson; Tom Brown; Anna Fisher; Daniel Mills; Andrew Melville, Norma  McCarten 

## **Structure and details of how managed including how it recruits Trustees** 

The charity is run by the current Trustee and six committee members. Monthly committee meetings are held to agree priorities and progress actions.  Regular communications and smaller decisions are discussed over email and the Gerddi Committee WhatsApp. 

Sadly, our dedicated and longstanding trustee, Mike Williams passed away last summer and trustee, Elenor Lamour  had to step down at the beginning of this year. 

We are in the process of recruiting new trustees, through advertising on social media, talking to local groups and organisations and through social networks and word of mouth. 

Potential trustees are given the GBDG Trustee Pack to read through and are invited to the monthly garden open days where they can enjoy the gardens, observe how they benefit the volunteers and get to know committee members and volunteers in a relaxed and sociable way. 

We hope to vote new trustees in on our AGM 

## **Activities and objectives in the year** 

Guided by our Survey from last year, our objectives include: 

Providing structured educational, social and therapeutic sessions in a wild life garden setting 

Providing a space for the general public to enjoy for exercise, contemplate. play socialise and dog walking. 

Provide space for other like-minded groups to carry out activities, such as the Moth group and PTHB Come to Your Senses 

## **Activities - What we are doing Now.** 



## **Weekly Volunteer gardening every Tuesday Morning** 

This is an informal social gathering of individuals who do invaluable work to maintain the gardens.  This can be weeding, maintaining the paths, and ensuring every plant has space to flourish.  A record of volunteers are kept.   Any more major work can be noted for discussion in the committee meetings and ways of managing them either on the Monthly Saturday volunteer gardening open day or by calling in specialists.. 

## **Monthly Open Garden day for garden Maintenance** 

Developing on from our pilot weekend sessions these have continued throughout the year with success.  This included our celebratory scything day which is always well attended as well as enjoyable nature based workshops facilitated by a variety of artists in garden craftwork, such as making bird feeders out of willow. 

## **Activities and Achievements of the Year.** 

## _**Sessions with Cyfle Newydd**_ - 

After some trial sessions, we ran successful afternoons with Cyfle Newydd, the local day centre for people with learning disabilities, until the weather was too cold for the client group to be able to participate safely.  Due to changes in staffing we have not been able to resume this activity yet.   However, there was a productive meeting with the manager of Cyfle Newydd.  The feed back about the sessions was very positive with reports on how the service users benefited from the change of environment and meeting new people and how much they enjoyed it.  For the future there was a discussion about applying for  grant funding to provide sessions for a broader range of people with health and well being needs which the Cycle Newydd services users could book in to.  This would develop their opportunity to build new skills and socialise in with a broader range of people in a nurturing outdoor environment. 

## _**Herbs for Healing**_ 

The beginning of this year saw the end of Herbs for Healing group.    This successful project had invited medical herbalists of the area who provided education on the benefits of Herbs and how to prepare home based remedies.  This was an opportunity for like minded people to come together and share their knowledge and one member has used the group for her Masters dissertation.   There is still a flourishing Apothecary Bed within the gardens  which volunteers continue to tend.  In response to requests from those who attended, we are currently in conversation with a new local herbalist group with a view to collaborating on a new herb based project. 

## _**Social Media**_ 

A great deal of work was put in to developing the Gerddi Bro Ddyfi website and in creating an active Face Book and Instagram page where news of the gardens and events are posted. Many have “liked” and shard the gorgeous photos of wildlife from the gardens. 



## _**Unsung Hero Award with Springwatch.**_ 

We were delighted when one of our long standing and dedicated volunteers, Sally Woof, who had been nominated by Fern, won the BBC Springwatch Unsung Hero Award.  The BBC came to film the gardens and the people in it and then in June, Fern and Sally went to Dorset for Sally to receive the award from Chris Packham and ?.  This was a great opportunity to acknowledge all the hard work and wisdom that Sally has put in to the gardens over the years. 

Stalls at community Events - eg Edible Mach Harvest Festival Display of craftwork made from dried flowers of the meadow and herbaceous boarders Sale of plants Awareness raising 

## **Use of the gardens by other groups - collaboration** 

## _**Come to your Senses**_ 

This project, run by the Powys Teaching Health Board in July, used the community gardens for the school children ( Norma can you add something here?) 

## _**Moth Night**_ 

We hosted this moth survey run by the Montgomeryshire Moth Group in October which was very well attended.  This was a fascinating opportunity to record the moths who appear in the gardens at night.  Various moth attracting lights were installed and people were shown how trap and identify the moths under the guidance of experts.  All moths were released once identified. 

## _**Lino Print workshop**_ 

In late Autumn, this was run by with Artist Veronica Calcero where students where encouraged to go in to the gardens for inspiration for their work. 

For the winter, we agreed to reduce the weekly volunteer sessions to longer monthly sessions on a Saturday.  In fact this move opened up the gardens to volunteers who would not normally be able to participate on a weekday. It also provided opportunities for families to attend and the nature-based workshops, camp fire and food have provided an informal and sociable attraction. 

## _**Wild Life Signs**_ 

Using funding from a grant ( which one?) some illustrated signs with explanations of certain features in the gardens were made and installed on the edge of the beds.   This gives an added educational opportunity for visitors and helps to explain the wild life friendly methods we use, such as leaving the beds messy and scything the meadow. 

£5000 grant from CLA 



John Mason memorial fund £5000 from Private Donor 

## **Challenges** 

This year we lost some much valued friends to the gardens.  Our dedicated Trustee, Mike Williams passed away; Geraint a valued volunteer who brought sunshine into the gardens with his sense of humour and hard work also passed away.  Our long standing Trustee Elenor has stepped down - a person who brought balance, insight and perspective to our meetings.  Our energetic and creative volunteer coordinator and manager Fern, moved on to do other work,  but returns to volunteer in the gardens on our Saturday open days.  Jeanette has also moved on. She was another great contributor to our meetings where she shared wisdom and experience as well as supporting Fern during the volunteer days by facilitating creative nature based craft work and developing our website and our social media profile. 

As with previous years, we have had the effects of extreme weather conditions, including floods and drought. 

With the gardens being open to the public all day and night, we have experienced a moderate amount of vandalism.  This has perhaps been less devastating due to the more vandal proof structures, such as metal benches secured by concrete, which can not be thrown about or set on fire.  Despite this volunteers have needed to collect up broken glass and even repair a puncture in the pond caused by a broken bottle. 

## Time spent on grant applications 

It has been disheartening that despite time spent on writing very good grant applications we have not been so successful this year.   This could be explained by the emergence of similar groups in the area in recent years, who are chasing the same grants.  We hope to turn this in to opportunities through collaboration with those groups by providing our unique and well established space as well finding a new niche. 

## **Survey - What does our Community want?** 

We shall be studying the last survey carried out at the beginning of 2024 and doing a new one to gather further ideas. 

Highlights from the previous survey indicated how much the garden is appreciated for its accessibility - it is open 24 hours every day and is within level walking distance of the town centre, therefore its unique qualities provides a quiet space for contemplation, play, dog walking or to meet up with friends.  More structured nature-based therapeutic activities for well being are also highly appreciated.  We aim to repeat our survey and gather more information in different ways to gain evidence what the community needs. 

## **A fresh Start!** 

The GBDG has been running for 14 years and has gently evolved with the contributions of many people.  We are at a point where new Trustees and committee members can bring a fresh approach.  Whatever the changes of people and the alterations made to meet new 



needs, the gardens, which came out of land overgrown by Rhododendron, presents as a resilient,  positive and versatile space for nature and the community. In the last year, volunteers and committee members have put a lot of energy in to maintaining the gardens and regenerating new ideas .  These will become apparent with the recruitment of new trustees and fund raising projects to take the gardens forwards. 

## **Finance** 



|INCOME AND EXPENDITURE|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|Year Ended 31/03/2024|2025|FUNDS|||
||Unrestricte|Restricted|TOTAL|Unrestricted|
|||||£|
|INCOME FROM|||||
|Donations|5809|0|5809|1988|
|Fundraising|2351|0|2351|1495|
|Grants|1110|4527|5637|1005|
|TOTAL|9270|4527|13797|4488|
|EXPENDITURE ON|||||
|Gardeners/Workshop leaders|5870|5126|10996|6662|
|Accountancy fees|300|400|700|694|
|Admin and IT|741|60|801|485|
|Y Plas Rent|196|0|196|294|
|Garden Maintenance & Vol Exps|928|103|1031|2095|
|TOTAL|8035|5689|13724|10230|
|NET INCOME/(EXPENDITURE)|1235|-1162|73|-5,742|
|BALANCE B/F|2334|4271|6605|8076|
|FUNDS C/F|3569|3109|6678|2334|



0 



Restricted TOTAL £ £ 

|0|1988|
|---|---|
|0|1495|
|11801|12806|
|11801|16289|
|14628|21290|
|0|694|
|0|485|
|0|294|
|3746|5841|
|18374|28604|
|-6573|-12,315|
|10844|18920|
|4271|6605|