The Lightbox's tarmac courtyard is becoming a free canal-side garden. Front gates shut from 11 November; use the Chobham Road door. The gallery is £20,000 short.

Work to turn the Lightbox’s bare courtyard into a community garden is about to start. From Wednesday 11 November the gallery’s front gates will be closed while the canal-side courtyard is rebuilt.

The gallery and museum stay open. Visitors get in through the back door on Chobham Road instead. The change is on the gallery’s visiting page.

Why the courtyard is changing

The Lightbox opened in 2007 and says it has welcomed more than 1.5 million visitors. Its building, by London Eye architects Marks Barfield, has won awards. The courtyard outside never matched it.

The gallery describes the space as tarmac with uneven ground and strong winds, with the canal bank creeping in under bracken, ivy and weeds. Its garden appeal page says the courtyard “was never fully realised”.

What the garden will include

The design is by landscape designer Miria Harris. Landform, a landscaping firm based in Chobham, will build it. The gallery says the garden will be:

  • a celebration of Woking and Surrey’s nursery heritage
  • lit by environmentally sustainable lighting, with its own irrigation
  • connected to Woking’s greenway routes
  • family-friendly, with areas for creative play
  • sensory-friendly, including for people living with dementia
  • biodiverse, to encourage wildlife
  • planted with hardy plants that tolerate pollution and drought

Miria Harris said she wanted to create “a beautiful, generous public garden with the gallery”. She described it as “a place that is free to enter, rooted in its setting and there for everyone to enjoy.”

How it is being paid for

The project won funding from Your Fund Surrey, the county council’s community projects fund, and is supported by the Surrey Gardens Trust. The gallery’s page does not say how much the fund awarded.

An earlier version of the same page, archived in May, put the proposed cost at £159,000. At that point the gallery was asking Your Fund Surrey for £90,000 of it.

The Lightbox is a charity. It now says it is £20,000 away from fully funding the garden.

To help raise it, Miria Harris has designed a limited-edition Risograph print called Lightbox Rose. It draws on Surrey’s links with roses and the garden historians Graham Stuart Thomas and Gertrude Jekyll. There are 50 copies at £120 each, sold in the gallery shop.

What it means for you

  • From 11 November, do not head for the front gates. Use the back door on Chobham Road. The galleries, the Woking’s Story museum, the café and the shop stay open, Wednesday to Sunday. The building is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
  • Pay What You Wish Wednesdays continue. Entry to the galleries and museum is by donation on Wednesday mornings, 10.30am to 12.30pm, according to the visiting page.
  • The finished garden will be free to enter, according to its designer.
  • To donate, use the form on the garden appeal page. The gallery says every donation to the appeal goes to the garden and the gallery. To reserve a print, email info@thelightbox.org.uk.

The gallery has not published a date for the garden to open. We will update this story when it does.

For more to do in town this month, see what’s on in Woking. The nearest car parks are on our parking in Woking page.