Plant Sale 2020
Our 2020 Plant Sale took place “remotely” because of coronavirus. With garden centres and nurseries closed, Wellow villagers have grown and donated an amazing 1,700 plants, covering 102 different types of plant. Here is a photo of Rob in his garage, sorting out the donations!
The plants were sorted into orders previously submitted from Rob’s catalogue.
We focused on vegetables and annuals this year, but there were also some herbs, fruit, biennials, perennials and shrubs.
The catalogue was regularly updated to show numbers of plants remaining as over 1400 plants were ordered straightaway! Many lines sold out quickly.
The sale has been organised in a way to meet all the restrictions around Covid-19. For this reason, we arranged delivery of your order to your house if that helps you. Others were allocated a specific time slot for collection to avoid contact with anyone else.
This year, all money raised was donated to the Bath & North East Somerset Carers’ Centre in recognition of the great work being done by family carers during this crisis and also because of the particular difficulties that small charities have in continuing with their fund-raising activities during ‘lockdown’.
We raised a staggering total of £789.25 to donate to Bath & North East Somerset Carers’ Centre. People were very generous in “rounding up” their payments with an additional donation, knowing it was for such a good cause. The sale did involve a huge amount of work for Rob who kindly organised the whole thing. We decided that such a great effort deserved recognition so a small ceremony was held to present the cheque. This posed a slight problem with social distancing, so the decision was made to attach the cheque to the end of a bamboo cane and present it this way. It seemed to fit well with horticultural tradition to use a bamboo cane, which was happily not supporting any runner beans at the time. The location we chose was Rob and Avril’s well tended garden and receiving the cheque is Gordon Westwood, treasurer of Bath Carers’ Centre. He told us a little of the important work they do to support carers and we know they will put the cheque to good use.
Our treasurer, Ian Harris, was there with his camera to record the event and took some excellent shots and a couple of them are below. We then drank a glass of something cold and fizzy to toast Rob for his hard work.
So thank you to all who donated plants and helped with the delivery, and to those who bought plants and made donations. We hope all your plants are thriving!
Gordon Westwood (Treasurer of Bath Carers’ Centre) receiving the cheque from Bridget Woollen (Chair of the Wellow & District Horticultural Society). Rob Greig a safe 2 metres in the background.
