A word from our Director

As you will all be aware we are finally coming to the end of the rebuild, thank goodness there is light at the end of the tunnel. It has been a very stressful two years for us all and I know at times quite disruptive to our visitors. I can only thank you all for being so understanding. We welcome any constructive criticism that will help us to bed in the new facilities and more importantly will help us to serve our visitors better. We have customer comment forms inside the new building for you to fill out and in return we are offering to enter each person into a free prize draw where the winner will receive a year’s free family arboretum membership and a meal for four in our new restaurant.

We have still got some work to do, we need to address the lighting problem within the new building as it is too dark in places, also we have to finish off the area outside Chris and Helens new shop and work on the new entrance to the arboretum itself. The vehicle signage to guide visitors around the site is being designed at the moment and this should be up within a couple of weeks. Finally we are getting quotes to repair parts of the main driveway in. This has been put off until now because of the damage that would be caused by the volume of heavy construction traffic entering the site during the rebuild. (Tarmac is not cheap. To resurface the whole drive in one go would cost approx. £60,000)
The future… our aim once we start to replenish our now depleted bank balance is to look at new projects to develop within the site, these include –
1) Restore the old Victorian pond and fountain within the walled garden (new plant area) also to plant up the newly developed beds, borders and car parks etc.
2) Creating a children’s vegetable garden to complement their school visits with Mr Rotavator. This will be a useful teaching facility and will be built within the old garden centre site making use of the existing raised beds etc.
3) Long term we hope to develop the old tea rooms into an actual purpose built class room and educational facility.
4) Restoring the wall around the walled garden.
5) To increase disabled access to the arboretum by investing in disabled Tramper vehicles. (A safety audit has already been taken out and we passed with top marks).
6) And of course to keep adding to/and expanding our internationally important botanical collection.