We recently shared with you that this autumn was a time of uncertainty and potential change for us: at the end of August we reached the end of our original grant funding which helped us make Railway Gardens a reality. Since early 2023, we’ve been working on a plan that would allow us to ensure that Railway Gardens could keep going at the end of that grant, and help us build on everything we’ve learned and everything good that’s happening here in order to make the project stronger and more impactful for the future.
Back in the spring we were absolutely chuffed to be selected as one of eleven Welsh projects to join the new Building Communities Trust Anchor Development programme, to help the project thrive long term. Now, after many months of planning followed by some nail-biting waiting, we’re delighted to share with you that we’ve been awarded four more years of funding from the National Lottery Community Fund to continue to develop Railway Gardens as a space for all.

We want to say a big thank you to every single one of you who took part in our consultation activities last year; you helped us understand how the project can move forward in a way that responds to local needs, and build a strong case that we should keep doing what we’re doing! While the site has been open for two years, we’ve now been working on Railway Gardens for over ten years (the picture at the top is from 2018!) and so many of you have offered your support along the way, we couldn’t do it without you.
So: what does this new funding mean in practice? For starters, it means that we can continue to staff the site for the next few years. Our part time staff team – Becca, Hannah, and Julia – amounts to the equivalent of a little over one and a half full time staff, and we use our time to ensure the site is safe and well maintained, plan and run a programme of activities, and work with you all wonderful people who volunteer, join in, or run your own activities here. In the future, it’s possible that local people may wish to take on the running of the project, and less or even no staff time is needed, but for now we know that we’ll have dedicated time over the next few years to plan exciting events, offer more support to people who want to get involved, and create a more inclusive, accessible space.
It also means we can continue to offer regular and special events focused on wellbeing, community connection, and care for people, place and planet. Popular annual events, like the Big Splott Seed Swap, the new year Wassail, and our Community Supper can continue and grow, and as always you welcome your ideas and feedback on what you’d like to see in the programme.

While we love running our events, our grant funding lets us increasingly focus on what you want to do here, and creating more space for people from Splott, Adamsdown, and across Cardiff to take on new roles and leadership in the project. To give just a few examples of what this means in practice…
- Providing free use of the space for community members to lead their own activities, and offering support where it’s needed to help people develop their skills around things like event planning, marketing, safety and more.
- Working with The Railway Gardens Circle, our fantastic advisory group for the project, to ensure participants voices and ideas are heard in planning, budgeting and the day to day running of the site.
- Transforming the staff office into a cosy and colourful dedicated space for volunteers, so that we can significantly increase the frequency and variety of opportunities we offer – watch this space, recruitment for an exciting new role will open end of October!
Although we’re still mostly grant funded, Railway Gardens does now bring in a little of its own income, mostly through venue hire, and building this is going to be key to the project’s long term sustainability. Our grant funding gives us the opportunity to develop ways for the project to ethically bring in as much income as possible while also working on getting that balance right between space for community activities and private hires.

Finally, we’re also using our grant support to work on ways to ensure everyone feels welcome, valued, and able to participate at Railway Gardens. From 2025 we’ll be working with local groups to learn low carbon skills and co-design their own climate solutions, with the aim of supporting more people to become change makers in their communities. And thanks to the support from the Building Communities Trust, we’re now working more closely with the wonderful Oasis Cardiff to learn from them, co-design activities, and work towards achieving the Garden of Sanctuary accreditation.
Over the next few months we’ll be sharing more changes with you, including some very exciting updates to our supporter community, but in the mean time please consider getting involved to help us make the most of this wonderful opportunity provided by our grant funding. Here are four simple ways you can be part of our next chapter:

1. Support us by sharing your time and skills. We always need volunteer support with gardening, maintenance, admin, and keeping the site open. We have plenty of occasional/ casual opportunities (sign up here to receive our monthly volunteer update) and from early November we’ll be launching a new regular ‘Meet and Greet’ role – please drop an email to julia@greensquirrel.co.uk so we can share the details with you.
2. Support us financially. Our new grant is obviously fantastic news, and allows us to keep doing what we do, but to grow and thrive long term we do rely on support from businesses and individuals too. Could you or your business sign up to our easyfundraising scheme to support us (at no extra cost to you) when you shop online? Or are you a business who would like to support or sponsor and aspect of our work?
3. Work with us! Outside of the our work with Railway Gardens we offer a range of online and in-person green skills workshops and talks and well as climate coaching, support, and content creation to help you or your organisation make your next campaign or project a success. We’ll be updating our website this winter to make our services easier to explore and book, but in the meantime please get in touch if you’re interested in booking us, partnering with us, or exploring how we could support your work.
4. Hire our space. Next time you’re looking for a space for an event, meeting, or party please consider choosing Railway Gardens! We’re a unique green and affordable venue, and everything we raise through venue hire goes back into our work to build a greener, fairer future for Cardiff.
Finally, our grateful thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund and the Building Communities Trust for their support, as well as to the Moondance Foundation for helping us bridge a challenging time.
So thrilled to read about your extra funding. We lived in Splott for 25 years but moved to mid Wales in March 2024. Railway gardens and the oasis centre were such a creative, fun, friendly, joy for the community we loved what you did/do and tried to engage whenever possible. We really miss nature club, long may your efforts and these valuable space continue x