supported charities

Established in the mid-1970s in memory of BALI founder member Geoffrey Chalk, the BALI Chalk Fund provides funding and bursaries for skills development across the landscape industry. Trustees comprise past and current members (including several past chairmen) whose role it is to identify industry causes that meet the Fund’s criteria for support. To date, the Chalk Fund has facilitated the development of industry training materials, awarded travel scholarships to enable young landscapers to learn from their counterparts overseas, provided training prizes for the winners of the national finals of the WorldSkills UK Landscape Gardening competition, and supported land-based colleges by providing trophies to students on landscape-related courses.

Greenfingers is a small national charity dedicated to supporting the children who use hospices around the UK, along with their families, by creating inspiring gardens for them to relax in and enjoy. The charity is dedicated to creating beautiful, well-designed outdoor spaces for children to enjoy with family, friends and siblings, whether through play and fun, or therapeutic rest and relaxation. To date, Greenfingers has created 44 inspiring gardens in hospices around the country. Greenfingers is driven by the belief that time spent outdoors, away from the bedside, can offer children and families under considerable stress a vital opportunity to embrace the benefits of being in the fresh air and engaging with the natural environment.

Perennial helps anyone who creates or maintains gardens, parks, sports facilities and other green spaces. If you work with plants, trees or grass, Perennial is your charity and can help you if you need support. Everyone working in or retired from horticulture can receive our free and confidential tailored one-to-one advice, support and financial assistance for as long as extra support is needed.

Perennial’s friendly, experienced and professional team helps individuals and their families as they deal with life-changing events such as serious injury, long-term illness, family bereavement, redundancy or family breakdown. We want everyone who works in horticulture to know that help is here if they need it and that no problem is too large or small.

Gardening for health charity Thrive specialises in using therapeutic horticulture to improve people’s lives.  

Thrive has three centres in Birmingham, London and near Reading where around 400 client gardeners come to take part in Social and Therapeutic Horticulture programmes that offer many physical and mental health benefits.  

Thrive’s horticultural therapists work with a wide range of client gardeners including people with learning disabilities, autism, physical disabilities, long-term illness, and those with mental ill health.  

The charity also runs a national information service providing advice on how to make gardening easier and uses its 40 years of therapeutic horticulture experience to train others looking to run projects and programmes across the UK.