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Community & Creative Campus

Developing exciting new places for all

Chiswick House & Gardens Trust today

Chiswick House & Gardens is a vital and beautiful green haven run by a small charitable trust: it already holds a special place in the lives of the local community.

It is admired around the world for the spectacular Grade I listed gardens, nurtured alongside the beautiful 18th-century Palladian villa. At the heart of gardens is the Kitchen Garden, an enchanting, productive space that has offered visitors beauty, pleasure and a deep connection to the seasons for over 300 years.

Today, the biggest challenge is tomorrow: ensuring these beautiful spaces thrive for future generations.

Support the place you love for future generations.

Community is our future

The Kitchen Garden is a growing space: a vital community hub and a productive haven. Intensive consultation and planning combined with recent experience reveals that the work here provides real answers for the future.

Every year, our partnerships with local groups and schools deepen as we create projects together around horticulture and creativity that boost wellbeing, mental health, and confidence. We need to do more, but we can’t because our current facilities just aren’t big enough or good enough to reach more of the people that need us.

We also need to do more to ensure that the gardens and the House survive and thrive for another 300 years.  As a charity, we must raise 75% of our income, that’s £1million+ of crucial funding that gets tougher to find every year.

We need your help | The Community & Creative Campus

Opening up hidden areas of the gardens will secure the charity’s future by creating a stronger community, effectively doubling our capacity to work with local people.

We need your help to create more practical and welcoming spaces for everyone, centred around the tranquility and beauty of the Kitchen Garden.

Refurbished historic sheds and stables, new buildings and a rescued 17th century walled garden will welcome twice as many community partners every year and provide a home for our expanding schools’ programme. We will welcome a cohort of artist/makers and run regular workshops and activities while offering spaces to hire for celebrations and events.

What is the Community & Creative Campus

The Learning Hub will mean we can welcome double the number of community partners and five times the number of schoolchildren every year. The Clore Learning Space is purpose designed for hands-on learning for all ages and, along with the meeting room, will be available for hire. The new office will free up space in the historic outbuildings for artist studios, and the kitchen will be equipped to cope with events, as well as staff and volunteer breaks.

The Learning Yard will be a welcoming place for everyone to learn or to linger with a coffee.

A new Kitchen Garden Hub will provide a covered working area for our gardeners and volunteers, whilst accessible toilets, a shower and kitchen will make sure that more people will be able to help with the everyday care of the gardens and enjoy the benefits of working together.

The Community Fruit Garden was a 17th century walled pear orchard, created at the same time as the Kitchen Garden. Overgrown and untouched for many years, it will be transformed into an orchard in which to learn and relax, with facilities for events as well as workshops.

The Studios will host a new community of artists and makers in the refurbished sheds, stables and outbuildings around the Kitchen Garden and behind the Conservatory.  Open Studio events and workshops will engage our visitors, and involvement in Trust projects will create opportunities for artists to develop and share their practice.

What will happen in all the new spaces?

  • The number of people taking part in our Growing Together programme will increase 3,300 to 7,700 p.a.
  • The number of community group partners taking part in Growing Together will increase from 50 to 100 p.a.
  • The number of schools that we work with will increase from 3 to 90 p.a.
  • The number of schoolchildren will increase from 300 to 5,500 p.a.
  • 19 brand new studios for 40-50 artist/makers
  • Additional annual turnover when all the new spaces are complete £400,000 p.a leading to
  • Additional net income of £100,000 p .a.

To achieve these ambitions we need your support

We have already secured just under £4.5 million, nearly 70% of the funding we need, and work has begun on the refurbishment of the historic buildings that will become the Studios.
We have just over £2 million left to raise and we need £1 million by August this year, so we can build the Learning Hub and launch our full programme for schools in September 2026. Our target is to raise at least £300,000 from our wonderful community of regular visitors and supporters.

We invite you to join us in this vital and exciting venture.

Now is the moment to play your part in ensuring these beautiful spaces thrive for future generations.

Make a donation to the Campus

To find out how you can help and to come and see progress so far please contact Sue Sandle, Head of Development at sue.sandle@chgt.org.uk.

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