“Welcome back to GardenLend

Got a garden? Fed up with it? Can’t cope any longer? Just not interested? Have the weeds taken over?

Want a garden? Frustrated green fingers? Not even a balcony? No window sill? Dreaming of flowers and vegetables?

Look no further. Well, only a little further.

GardenLend is a website that links up neglected gardens and their owners with keen gardeners who have nowhere to garden.  The site has undergone a revamp and we aim to have as much as possible of the services and features available online.

Registering at our members’ area all that it takes to start to solve your problems. We provide the contacts and you take it from there.”

Such a simple and brilliant idea – almost foolproof, it would seem – but few, if any takers so far and – equally mysteriously – no indications why this revolutionary approach to rescuing neglected gardens and to maximising the enjoyment of limited green space that we have to the greatest benefit of the most people has not been the rip-roaring success that it merits.

In the wake of the Environmental Audit Committee report on Carbon Trading, what better way to add to your personal carbon credits?

The Idea

GardenLend.co.uk is one of those sublimely simple ideas that – to coin a phrase – “does what it says on the tin” and as such is almost above explanation.  Just in case we have missed the point, it is a forum allowing garden owners to advertise for people to help and for those wishing to plant and grow fruit, vegetables and flowers to find such places to a mutually beneficial outcome.  In addition, the planet gets to look a bit prettier, carbon dioxide levels reduce, healthier food grows in season in more natural surrounds and everyone is a little less stressed about the forthcoming Armageddon, or at least whence the next courgette is coming.

The site and its features

In addition to Gardeners Wanted and Gardens Wanted, there are discussion forums (fora & fauna?) on a range of subjects: Introductions, New Members, Ask GardenLend, General Advice, Container Gardening, Edible Gardening, Garden Design, Green Gardening, Grass and Lawns, plus Gardening News and General Discussion in the members’ area.

A blog about GardenLend and related horticultural, political and amusing thoughts on the great gardening issues of the day provides an irregular update on matters of interest, allowing visitors to contribute to the great debating points of the moment.

The site also boasts an online shop where people can also find garden supplies and books, as well as links to sites of interest to gardeners.  For the more enterprising amongst our visitors, www.GardenLend.com offers e-Commerce Web Hosting for all that you need for your own online store.

The history of GardenLend

GardenLend.co.uk started as a joint collaboration between the husband and wife team of Ian and Sarah Springham, back in 2006.  The initial idea was Sarah’s: “When I was a child I grew up in a house with a big garden. My mother taught me to garden and I loved it. As I grew up, I moved to smaller and smaller places until I ended up with just a balcony. I really missed my garden and took up an allotment. Every day as I walk there, I pass a lot of neglected gardens and want to knock on the door of the house and say ‘Can I have your garden, please?’  With this site, I hope to enable frustrated gardeners to do just that. I’m sure that behind the door is someone who looks out of their window every day and wishes that someone would transform their garden into a thing of beauty. My husband, Ian, had to do gardening as a punishment as a child, but now enjoys our allotment and thinks this is a great idea. Between us, we can make this work and bring pleasure to more people.”

Ian is an IT professional of what seems to be many, many decades’ standing and needed a project for an online course in web entrepreneurship – thus another marriage made in Heaven was struck and the site was developed.

Initially, the site contained almost all that it now does, but in a pretty static and – dare I say it? – slightly bland format; the idea was so great that it did not seem to need much frippery attached.  Providing a constant stream of home-generated content did seem a trifle daunting, but we pressed on regardless. Regardless of low activity on the site, little rescuing of gardens or gardeners and almost no income from this noble venture. 

We sent out press releases, thought up brilliant promotional schemes, were featured a couple of times in our local newspaper – even being nominated for the Green Guardian Awards last year, optimised the site for search engines – key terms getting right to the top 10 on Google listings, did everything that we could think of to get GardenLend off the ground, but still no joy.

A change of approach was the only solution: the site had an overhaul, the low membership fee of £5.00 abandoned; the site, blog, forum and shop linked together more tightly and the whole endeavour became focussed much more on interaction with Gardeners and Garden Owners. 

The present situation

As shown, GardenLend.co.uk has been extensively revamped, with the aim of making it freely accessible to the burgeoning numbers of people wishing to grow their own fruit, vegetables and flowers and to those with green spaces that they feel are not being used to their greatest potential.  Ancillary services, such as the shop, with its host of accessories and books for home and garden plus the latest “reviewed and recommended reading” and the blog also cater for the needs, material and philosophical, of our growing membership.

Membership is free and relatively easy to join  There are few restrictions, outside of the usual ones regarding legality, privacy, common sense, taste, decency, good manners and appropriateness.  So what are you waiting for?

The future

World food prices soar while you have an unproductive garden - does this make sense?  With allotments as rare as hen’s teeth these days, why not turn your garden into one?  Can’t be bothered or have no time? Join GardenLend and meet up with gardeners with no place to garden IN YOUR AREA and then you can both benefit from what your garden can produce.  With the economy in a downward spiral and food prices rising, doesn’t it make sense to maximize the value of your home by turning your plot into an old-fashioned kitchen garden?  You can grow fruit, vegetables and herbs - saving money and getting better quality than you can from supermarkets.  Your carbon footprint will be down and your feel-good factor up.  You can grow the basics that you use every day, or expensive produce like asparagus that will soon be even more of a treat than you’d like. 

Links

Site: http://www.gardenlend.co.uk/

Members: http://find.gardenlend.co.uk/

Blog: http://blog.gardenlend.co.uk/

Shop: http://shop.gardenlend.co.uk

Email: info@gardenlend.co.uk

 

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