LIVE: Monday 26th February to Sunday 10th March 2024
DOUBLE YOUR DONATION AT NO EXTRA COST TO YOU
After a costly building project, we are launching a time limited match funding drive between the 26th February and 10th March 2024.
For every pound donated our funding partners will match it – up to £5,500. For example, if you donate £5 during the drive, we will get £10! Over a two-week period, we could raise up to £11,000 with your help!
What will your money go towards
The SLBI holds a herbarium, library, botanic garden, greenhouse, kitchen and other multi-use spaces. However, there is further work needed to make these more inviting for public use.
This funding drive will support us to begin to reconfigure and equip our spaces so more people can use them to learn – for example, we’d benefit from having better lighting, comfortable chairs, better storage and modernising some of our displays.
Over the next two years we will gradually reopen, launching a series of events, discussions and workshops to better understand how we can operate as a public learning space dedicated to plants, biodiversity and civic participation.
YOUR DONATION WILL HELP US TO OPEN OUR DOORS TO MORE PEOPLE
Huge thanks to our anonymous match funding partners
More about the repairs and restoration project
Following substantial structural problems, over the past 12 months the Institute’s spacious two storey Victorian house went through extensive repairs and restoration. The building suffered from major subsidence causing cracks in the walls. To treat the subsidence the building was underpinned, one storey was dug out from beneath the building and filled with concrete. Throughout the house masonry walls were stitched together to strengthen and stabilise them.
Some walls that had been finished with distemper, a popular chalk mix in older houses, were damaged to the point of needing to be fully replaced. While this repair work was taking place several lath and plaster ceilings came down and needed replacing. A non-load bearing wall was sinking and needed removal.
The gutters and flat roofs have been repaired. As the ground floor kitchen was being repaired significant damp was discovered.
