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Gardens of Sussex and Normandy
This is a two year funded European Interreg project which has two main strands:
- to bring together the owners and professional gardeners from Sussex and Normandy gardens open to the public through fact finding/learning visits
- to improve the promotion of Sussex and Normandy as areas to visit for garden lovers in France, the UK and Belgium
In the first year of the project, 2005, a party of 52 French garden owners, professional gardeners and operators of B&Bs with beautiful gardens, spent several days visiting Sussex, observing how landscaping, event planning, support services and garden design are handled in Sussex.
The project paid for a stand promoting Sussex Gardens at two main consumer garden shows – at Beervelde in Belgium and Courson in France, where the stand design won an award.
A dedicated programme of media communication and public relations activity resulted in a visit to Sussex of a TV crew from “Silence ça pousse” the most important gardening programme on French TV. The programme will announce the Sussex & Normandy Gardens project to garden-lovers across the whole of France.
Year two activity for 2006 included a major coup; the Gardens of Sussex & Normandy stand was accepted at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show. Sussex Gardens were again represented at the Beervelde, Meise and Courson garden shows with additional press and media activity. A return fact finding visit by the participating Sussex owners and professional gardeners took place in Normandy.
Around 150,000 copies of a leaflet promoting the gardens on both sides of the channel were distributed, primarily to visitors at the garden shows being attended. Throughout the spring / summer periods a promotional campaign ran on Transmanche & Brittany Ferries’ services featuring group discounts or 2 for1 offers for ferry travellers visiting Sussex and Normandy gardens.
A new consumer website was launched to promote the fantastic number and range of gardens Sussex (and Normandy) has to offer, translated into three languages – English, French and Flemish
Although funding for the project finished at the end of 2006 it was so successful in terms of increased profile and promotion of the gardens and increased partnership working, both the English and French partners were keen to find ways for future development. So the Cultural Sussex project came about in 2007.
