The Gardens Trust is recognised for its leading national role with respect to parks and gardens, with flagship work as a statutory consultee in the planning system, unique efforts to support and nurture local volunteers, and groundbreaking initiatives to encourage the sharing of historic parks and gardens with wide audiences.
Given all this, we cannot survive without the financial support of our membership, nor could we benefit from the grants we receive without significant non-grant income. For example, Historic England grants require us to have a high percentage of other income. Individual membership income, which is our largest source of other non-grant income, is thus essential if we are to continue to obtain these grants and to support our core activities, including our work with and support for County Gardens Trusts. A large and healthy individual Gardens Trust membership is essential to the survival of the Gardens Trust into the future.
The survival of the Gardens Trust will ensure our important national role in conservation, research, education and campaigning, as well as our mutually beneficial relationship with County Gardens Trusts which involves all these activities and, in particular, joint efforts on conservation and planning, training and networking. We unite all of us interested in historic parks and gardens, so that we can speak more powerfully together than with our local voices alone.
For this reason, the Gardens Trust is launching a multi-year effort to build its membership. This is beginning in September 2019 with a publicity drive amongst County Gardens Trusts to encourage their local members to also join the Gardens Trust. By way of incentive, we are delighted to announce that there is now a special discounted rate of £25 for County Gardens Trust members joining the Gardens Trust. (And we would be even happier to welcome any who choose to join at the original rate of £35 single and £43 joint, which of course would provide more funds to support our work!) We urgently need your help, so please consider joining and supporting us. We look forward to welcoming you soon!
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