Your information

Privacy

A plain-English explanation of what information The Forgotten Garden uses and why.

Who is responsible for your information?

The Forgotten Garden is the controller of personal information used to run this business. Contact: info@theforgotten.garden. Business correspondence address: 11 Peak Place, Hyde, SK14 4WG.

Last updated: 17 August 2026.

Information we may receive

Order information such as your name, email address, delivery address, items ordered and order/transaction details supplied through PayPal.
Messages you send us, including your email address and the contents of customer-service enquiries.
Website technical information. The hosting provider may maintain normal server logs such as IP address, browser information, requested pages, date/time and security events.
Basic site statistics from our own server-side counter, described below.

Payment card or bank-account details used during PayPal checkout are handled by PayPal; The Forgotten Garden does not store your full payment-card details on this website.

Why we use it

To process, pack, deliver and support orders and to perform the contract with you.
To reply to enquiries and resolve delivery, damage, refund or product issues.
To maintain financial and transaction records required for accounting and tax purposes.
For legitimate business interests such as protecting the website, preventing abuse and understanding whether the website is being used.

Buying from us does not automatically add you to a marketing mailing list.

Simple visitor statistics

The website uses a small first-party, server-side counter rather than a third-party analytics service. It records page-view totals and approximate daily visitor totals.

To avoid counting every refresh as a different person, the server briefly combines the IP address and browser information with the current date to create a one-way anonymous identifier. The raw IP address is not written to the analytics file, and the identifier is discarded after that day. The counter does not place an analytics cookie or use browser local storage.

Weekly, monthly and yearly “visitor” totals are sums of the daily approximate visitor counts, so someone who returns on several different days can be counted once on each of those days. It is deliberately simple rather than behavioural tracking.

Who information may be shared with

Information is shared only where needed to operate the business, for example with PayPal for payment processing, postal/courier services for delivery, website hosting providers, accounting services, or professional/public authorities where there is a legal requirement. We do not sell customer information to advertisers.

How long we keep information

Customer-service messages are kept only for as long as they are reasonably useful for the enquiry or related order. Order and financial records may need to be kept longer to meet tax and accounting obligations. For a UK sole trader, HMRC generally requires relevant business records to be retained for at least five years after the 31 January submission deadline for the relevant tax year.

The website’s basic analytics file retains daily aggregate totals for a little over one year and does not retain the previous days’ anonymous visitor identifiers.

Your data-protection rights

Depending on the circumstances, UK data-protection law may give you rights to ask for access to your personal information, correction, deletion, restriction or objection to certain processing. To make a request, email info@theforgotten.garden.

You also have the right to raise a concern with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office if you believe your information has been handled improperly.