GardenLend – rescuing neglected gardens

Since most of our attempts to find:

1. People wishing to have others working on their gardens
2. People wishing to work on others’ gardens
3. A garden for ourselves

have met with only moderate success (none at all in no. 3), I set down to think about what we were missing.

Then I had a flash of inspiration – if people did not want the intrusion of strange gardeners nor the prospect of unpaid toil in the vineyards of another, why not just swap the domiciles and attached gardens?

This boiled down to keeping the houses and gardens as they were and – instead – swapping the residents.

Such a solution would work out for all concerned. People would have the garden they wanted without interlopers or the risk of exploitation.  Oh, did I mention? we might also find someone who would want to swap their ground floor flat and garden with our 2nd floor flat and balcony.

We have been trying to swap to a flat with a garden for some years, having tried our local council, housing association and various housing exchange websites.  The one shortfall in all these organisations is that they do not take garden or greenspace requirements into account when allocating or exchanging properties.

All I would need do would be to set up such a site where provision and meeting of garden requirements was paramount.  Like in so many other endeavours, if one feature – such as a garden – is of over-riding concern, then others – such as location – are more flexible.

Sublime genius!  Now only to put it into action.

There need to be 3 categories:

Domicile with Garden offered
- in exchange for domicile without a garden;
Domicile with Garden wanted;
- in exchange for domicile without a garden;
Domicile with Mismatched Gardens
- in exchange for domicile with a differing garden;

And lo! a new forum subject area and three subsidiaries were brought into being:

• House (and Garden) Swap along with its message boards:

• • Domicile with Garden offered

  • Domicile with Garden wanted

  • Domicile with Mismatched Gardens

These forums are designed to allow people wanting to swap a domicile with a garden for a domicile with either no garden or with a differing garden or green space to contact each other and to start the process of exchange.

You will need to contact your landlord and / or solicitor to actually set about the legal process of exchange.  GardenLend is only acting as a conduit for exchange of initial information; all else is the visitor’s responsibility.

There! All done.  Now all we need is for people to register and post their requirements in the appropriate forums or to reply to messages posted.

By the way, we have a lovely flat in sunny SW20 and are looking for a garden flat almost anywhere in the country, preferably with ready access to a river or canal.