Gardens Projects 2024
Creating a beautiful environment
in harmony with local wildlife
Supporting local wildlife
Open park and meadow areas
An environment to relax and reflect
Support for essential pollinators
Secluded sitting areas
Cut flower and herb gardens
Our Primary Projects for 2024
Our aim is to provide practical and well maintained park and flower gardens for our community and its visitors, as well as group events and retreats on 2 properties which cover a total area of 65,000 m2
In addition, our primary garden projects for 2024 are:
Refit our public indoor garden with more appropriate lighting systems, replace the planting area soil and employ planned planted to give depth, colour and structure to the area.
Inspire our visitors with beautiful signs on our walking paths that give quotes and moments of reflection.
Introduce new apple trees and rose bushes to the gardens at Maitreya Pure Land.
Raise funds for a professional hedge trimmer to replace our old one to keep a wide variety of ornamental bushes in trim.
Continue to grow from seed and develop our flower gardens at Maitreya Pure Land to provide arranged flowers for our altars, rooms, events, as well as gifts and offerings, and generate seeds for the 2025 growing season.
Continue to grow from seed and develop a wide selection of organically grown fresh herbs for our community kitchen.
Develop support for the 'BeeKind' Project to create a sustainable project to help protect European species of honey bees.
“I feel that we should not only maintain gentle, peaceful relations with our fellow human beings but also that is very important to extend the same kind of attitude toward the natural environment.”
His Holiness The Dalai Lama
'My Tibet', University of California Press 1995
How you can help
All our Garden Projects are funding through your kind support.
Even a small offering to support has incredible benefit not just for oneself by making an offering to the monastery and your own practice of generosity, but also for Nalanda's future, and the general maintenance of this vital sangha community. In addition, whether small, medium or large, donations create a direct link between the donor and everyone who will ever benefit from their contact with Nalanda Monastery.
Just as the smallest of drops of water contribute to filling a cup, your help will make a difference. May all your virtuous wishes be realized immediately, may all your actions benefit all our kind mother sentient beings, and may all suffering cease in this very second.
Refitting our indoor garden
The indoor garden is a versatile and well used public space that now needs the soil replacing, the grow lights definitely need an upgrade, and a professional look at light suited plants to give colour and structure.
Discovering inspiring quotes in our gardens
We have some wonderful walking paths especially on the grounds of Maitreya Pure Land. Would you like to support us in placing high quality all-weather signs around our grounds with beautiful precious quotes for our visitors to find, to stop and reflect?
We can create a beautiful sign with a quote of your choice to inspire others.
Replacing the veteran rose bushes
At some point in the history of Maitreya Pure Land there was a real rose enthusiast taking care of the gardens. WE have been assessing the health of many of these beautiful old bushes in the last year, and unfortunately many of them are suffering from sicknesses associated with old. This comig year would be an ideal opportunity to replace many of them to add to our repertoire for cut flowers to display on the alter or public spaces at the monastery. We now have ideal vacant spaces for climbing or bush varieties.
Estimated cost: New certified disease free rose bushes in a variety of colours in bush or climbing varieties with excellent root stock (5 liter pots) - €35 each
Geranium window boxes
To give the earliest possible display of flowers last year, we opted to buy very young plants from a local nursery that were quickly developed in our greenhouse over a few weeks before being potted outside in various public areas. We then can have a quality display of flowers from May until September at the lowest possible cost.
Approximate cost:
35 small geranium / surfinia / petunia plants - €100
3 x 70 liters medium quality potting soil - €40
Our BeeKind Project
In 2023, the BeeKind Project successfully introduced 2 colonies of a variety of honey bees that are resistant to the many environmental challenges that pollinating insects have to deal with.
In late summer, we harvested a very small amount of honey (4kg), pure beeswax and a small amount of propolis to offer to our sponsors of the project, but as our colonies will reach a full strength in 2024, we expect a much larger honey harvest (around 40kg) to offer to the community. In addition, a third colony will join them in May 2024. The project is ongoing, and your kind support is always welcome. You are also very welcome to have a guided tour of the hives in Spring and Summer and see the fascinating honey bees going about their work. And maybe even a small taste a fresh warm honey directly from the hives.
Support for European bats
The well-being of bats is directly linked to our quality of life, our environment and its biodiversity and we plan to provide them with essential support in the coming year because of ongoing renovation work of the monastery's old farmhouse building.
Production of at least one third of the world’s food, including 87 of the 113 leading food crops, depends on pollination carried out by insects, bats and birds. The environmental services they provide is worth over €180 billion per year.
Donate young fruit trees
Most of the very old fruit trees at Maitreya Pure Land are exhausted, and so we can then go ahead and find suitable varieties of apple, pear, plum and cherry to replant in our gardens. If you would like to personally donate young trees or funds to replace one, our Gardener is very happy to help you in your selection.
Estimated cost: €40 each
Compost and germination soil
We hope to get close to being self sufficient in our compost soil needs in 2025 through composting garden waste throughout 2024. However, in the coming year we will have to buy what we need.
€200 = 20 x 70ltr of compost soil
Seeds and young flowering plants
One possibility to help cover running costs is to sell small plants to the monastery's local family and friends, in addition to bringing colour to our public areas. If you would like to donate seeds or small plants (aromatic herbs or flowers) that can be developed in our greenhouse, you are very welcome to speak with our Garden Manager for advice on your selection.
Creating safe nesting for song birds
In early Spring 2024, construction and placement of 40 bird nesting boxes will begin at Maitreya Pure Land with priority focus on local songbird species, and 2 designs to suit the 2 owl species that use our riverbank boundary. These arrangements will be complementary to the songbird food stores we have created in the last 2 years. We will also need to replace around 10 (of 20) bird nesting boxes that have been installed on Nalanda's property since 2016.
Check out a photo album celebrating the Spring and Summer Flowers grown from seed in our greenhouse
