Plant Sale 2014 and Beyond

We had our annual Plant Sale in May in addition to plants we were selling our own Honey from the trading hut too. As always we were able to serve people with cakes and refreshments allowing them a few moments to admire our beautiful allotment site, sitting and chatting with friends under the shelter of the Piggery.  

We had very colourful displays on the annual  and perennial stalls, as many of the flowers were actually in flower. This is something we try for every year, achieving success in most areas, but some things are very stubborn and refuse to perform on the day. Vegetables and herbs, also were more plentiful and varied, we try to introduce new things to keep the audience interested.

This year is the RHS 50th anniversary of Britain in Bloom and to celebrate this they distributed sunflower seeds to Horticultural Societies and Schools for the general public to come and sow at events around the country. Unfortunately no one turned up on the day (20th April), probably because this was also Easter Sunday, but we still grew over 100 sunflowers to sell at the plant sale or for children to enter our 4th Annual Sunflower Competition. One or two children had disasters with their sunflowers. Having grown them beautifully, either the plants succumbed to weather or animal attack; phenomena with which any allotment holder will be familiar!  However, rather a harsh lesson for a small child.  

Now for what will be happening at the Gordon Road on Sunday 7th September.  We are very excited at being hosts to the National Garden Scheme Open Gardens.  It is only relatively recently that allotments have been chosen to stage these events and the organisers considered our site to be outstanding.  We have many attractions including our Wild Life Plot, which hosts a colony (if that's the term) of slow worms.  There are Raised Beds for the elderly or people with physical disability and others for school children and we also have a Log Cabin accessible by wheelchair for shelter, if the weather turns for the worse, or just to sit and relax and read a book from our gardening library.  There are communal facilities to have tea or even to have a barbecue on the Piggery or to cook a meal in he Green Room, situated next to our Trading hut, which supplies useful garden materials at reasonable prices to FHS members.  We also sport a wheelchair accessible eco loo; all of this in the most spectacular surroundings. In addition to the entrance fee, all proceeds from the sale of raffle tickets will be donated to the NGS.  The NGS collects money for very worthy causes and we are proud to be able to support them.

On the day we will also be selling our own Honey from the hives at Gordon Road as well as home grown produce, cakes and jams. There will be home made cakes and refreshments available for all who wish to partake. We will also be announcing the prizewinners of the Sunflower Competition and distributing the prizes to winners in each category. We hope that as many people as possible can join us and make this event a huge success.