Safeguarding Cloudehill gardens
We are very pleased to announce that the creators of the world-class Cloudehill garden, Jeremy and Valerie Francis, have guaranteed its long-term preservation by signing a contract for its eventual transfer to The Diggers Foundation.
Diggers members will be aware of the long-term partnership we’ve had with Cloudehill since the Diggers Garden Shop opened on site in 2014. Jeremy will continue to manage the garden, as he’s done for nearly 30 years, and oversee its ongoing development for as long as he wishes. Very little at the garden will change apart from the eventual ownership and preservation, which is great news for us and for Jeremy, as well as for the thousands of garden visitors who know and love this special garden.
Heronswood
The seeds of The Diggers Foundation were sown in 1983 when we purchased Heronswood as our family home and the headquarters of the fledgling Diggers Club. We realised then that precious historic houses and gardens should never be traded like real estate but preserved for all time. We are lucky indeed that Jeremy and Valerie share that understanding.
The garden of St Erth
In 1996 we purchased Tommy Garnett’s unique Garden of St Erth, at his request, to ensure Tommy’s legacy would be preserved in a second Diggers garden.
Safeguarding Cloudehill
Cloudehill will be the third garden that The Diggers Foundation will own, giving our members continued free access to three of Australia’s finest gardens. Other visitors pay a small entry fee, which contributes to the upkeep of our gardens.
Because the preservation of many of Australia’s finest gardens receives no funding support from government, The Diggers Foundation has emerged as a focused garden charity, in a similar tradition to the Royal Horticultural Society in England.
We sincerely thank you, our 80,000 members, for your support over the last four decades, and our more recent Foundation donors
who now help us to do this important garden preservation work.