Over the past twelve years Gerddi Bro Ddyfi Gardens has grown from inspired beginnings into a thriving, treasured space that forms an integral part of our community.

It all began in 2008, when founders Kate Doubleday and Leigh Munton were running a series of short horticultural courses and realised there was no way for people to carry on gardening in a social way.

Over the next nine years they worked together with a team of dedicated volunteers and local residents to build raised vegetable beds, a shelter, a pond, a wildflower meadow and many other features, creating a beautiful, therapeutic wildlife community garden in the heart of Machynlleth.

Most of this took place during a combination of weekly drop-in sessions and one-off projects and workshops, which were open to anyone who wanted to learn more about things such as wildflower and insect identification, tool repair and maintenance, scything, willow-weaving, seasonal planting, and much more.

In 2017 Kate handed over the gardening gloves to Angela Paxton, our current Volunteer Co-ordinator, and the gardens continue to go from strength to strength, with tree-planting schemes, beginners' gardening courses, and development of the apothecary garden being just some of our ongoing activities.

In 2018 we celebrated our ten-year anniversary and welcomed Alys Fowler as our new Patron. In 2019, Anita O’Flynn joined us as our new Assistant Volunteer Co-ordinator and, alongside our events for National Meadows Day, we held our first Pollinator Festival, together with Edible Mach Maethlon. Throughout, the committee and co-ordinators have continued with ongoing fundraising and application work, and 2019 was also the year we were awarded a People and Places grant from the National Lottery.

In 2020, we began by planting an ‘edible hedge’ of fruit bushes and small fruit trees along the gardens’ north side, and were thrilled to receive a green flag award from Keep Wales Tidy for the sixth year running! Since then coronavirus restrictions have of course had a big impact but, thanks to our volunteers’ and co-ordinators’ tireless support and commitment, the gardens have not only remained open but continued to thrive.

If you’d like to find out more, come along or get involved, our weekly drop-in sessions are held every Tuesday and Thursday from 10.30am - 4.00pm unless otherwise stated, and our workshops are held monthly. See our events page for the latest information.