Garden Opening Resources

Thank you for being involved with Scotland’s Gardens Scheme this year! Whether you are opening your garden or volunteering as part of a District Team, we hope you will find the resources on this page useful for your open day.

Our Open Your Garden brochure is a great starting point for helpful information about our charity, how everything works and what to expect when opening your garden with Scotland’s Gardens Scheme and this webpage is designed to complement the brochure and provide a hub where you can find useful resources and guidance to help you make the most of your open day. We’ve split the page into the following sections to help you find what you’re looking for:

Promoting Your Garden Opening
Promoting Your ‘By Arrangement’ Opening

Ideas & Activities for Your Open day
Printable Signs
Financial Information & Guidance
In Case Something Goes Wrong…

If there is anything else you would like us to add to this webpage, please do get in touch with our Head Office team on 0131 226 3714 or by email: info@scotlandsgardens.org.

Scone Palace Garden Fair

Download this template to complete and send to local press:

Press Release Template Social Media Top Tips

Promoting Your Garden Opening

The Head Office and local district teams are very active on social media and work to promote open gardens and related news through the year. Head Office also sends out a weekly e-news to nearly 14,000 subscribers (and growing!) to share garden opening news.

There are also things you can do as a garden owner to promote your garden;

Make sure you have good pictures of your garden showing how it looks at the time/s you plan to open. Follow the links below for top tips and speak to your District Organiser about how to share your pictures with Head Office.
If you’re on social media, remember to follow us on social media and tag us with your garden posts, so we can share them too. Follow the social media links at the bottom right of this page to access our social media pages.

Useful links

General Information About ‘By Arrangement’ Openings

Making the Most of Opening Your Garden ‘By Arrangement’

Download this template to complete and send to local press:

'By Arrangement' Press Release Template 2023

‘By Arrangement’ Openings

For those gardens that open ‘by arrangement’ only, you may notice that it can be harder to attract visitors to come and see your garden. We find that sometimes people feel a little shy about calling or emailing to arrange a special date to visit, feeling they don’t want to bother the owner!

As an alternative, or alongside your ‘by arrangement’ dates, why not consider the following ideas:

If you have limited parking, you could try adding some specific dates at a time that won’t be busy; for example, what about opening on one or two week days between 10-4pm? You are more likely to have a gentle stream of visitors if you’re open on a specific date, but it will be much less busy than a weekend.
You could try specific dates but with advanced booking, setting a limit on the number of visitors. This means you will know what to expect and won’t be overrun with visitors. Speak to your District Organiser and Head Office can also help you with this.
Consider asking for ‘by arrangement cards’ - Head Office can supply small business card sized or A6 mini fliers advertising your opening; you can then distribute these in local places to encourage new visitors. Some people even pop these through local letterboxes!
If there are other gardens opening nearby, you could team up with them to open on a specific date, perhaps during the week, to encourage people to visit a small collection of gardens at the same time.
Make a point of visiting other gardens open by arrangement in the area and encourage them to do the same!