Newington's Garden Safari
Residents host a garden sale.
In 2023 residents showed an interested in doing a boot fair to sell their unwanted items. After lots of discussions it was apparent that most residents were unable to go to any local boot fairs as they were too far or they didn’t drive to transport their items. After looking into this the residents discovered they could hold their own boot fair from their own gardens by having a garden safari.
A garden safari is where lots of households in the community hold a sale from their own gardens all on the same day. Any one is welcome to trail the gardens to look for a good bargain.
To support their idea and get the garden safari up and running a date was chosen and the team got to work. A map of Newington was set up and everyone who wanted to take part could message in via email, text or Facebook to get their address added to the map. The map was made available to the public which pinned every address in the community that was taking part. A poster was created and this his was printed to go in resident windows and placed in local shops to advertise, it was also shared over various Facebook pages.
The first garden safari was hosted on Sunday 3rd September 2023 for four hours and was a great success with one household making over £300 in sales. After getting feedback residents wanted this to become a regular thing as it helped them to get rid of their unwanted items without throwing them away from the comfort of their own garden. It was also observed that the houses weren’t so easy to find. After doing a poll and residents putting their ideas forward it was clear what was needed to make the next one better. So for the next one we printed address lists that were made available at each house to hand out and balloons were provided for each house to put on their gates to make them visible to the buyers.
Some residents use this opportunity to sell their unwanted items to raise money for local charities and children are creating their own items such as friendship bracelets, to sell to make themselves a bit of pocket money.
Over the past 2 years there have been 4 garden safaris in Newington starting with roughly 20 households taking part. This has now grown with over 20 roads taking part and more households now getting involved.
Buyers form out of the area are now wanting to travel to the sales and are getting a real sense of our community spirit whilst grabbing a bargain.
We will continue to support our residents and look forward to future safaris.
Next Safari date: To be decided