Stagelights Garden Open Day

The Glorious Garden Open Day

Sunday 5th August

Pictures below

I'm very pleased to report that the whole day was a great success. We opened at 10a.m. and it wasn't long before our first customers made an appearance. About 60 people in all came through the garden, and most of them partook of the wonderful array of cakes, scones and biscuits that we had on offer! The weather was absolutely perfect, the first time for the summer, certainly the hottest day to date, with the temperature reaching 24'C in the shade under the pergola, so what it was out in the open I can only hazzard a guess at between 30'C - 40'C

Richard and Pauline Hillberg looked after the Plants stall, raffle tickets and entrance fees, and after a quiet start on the plants stall it wasn't too long before Richard was selling plants left, right and center. We had a good variety of plants, from many places around the world, and some of these, such as the succulents like 'Aoniums' from Africa and 'Ladies of the Night' from Italy proved to be the most popular.

We had a wonderful selection of Raffle prizes donated by a few members of the The Stagelights, 21 prizes in total, so that was a great success.

The garden was looking beautiful and all the hard work that had been put into it and the very many nights at 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. while it was raining cats and dogs, picking thousands and thousands of snails and slugs off the plants before they anihilated too many, paid off as there were many nice comments, and everyone seemed to enjoy it, so that was success enough for both Rod and myself. We had put pots of beer etc down to catch the snails but there were so many this year that it was easy to pick anything up to a hundred each night from the plants, even doing this for about 2 months, we still lost several plants to the little perishers. But over all, even though we lost the odd battle, I like to think we won the war.... Mind you, it is continuing..........., but at least there will be a lot less to deal with next year. I hope.

A few members of the club came along to help out which was great. Corin & Sam worked extremely hard, totally non stop, right up to 3.30 which in that heat, up and down the steps constantly was hard work indeed. They did a marvelous job, Well done Guys. Margaret was the head honcho in the Kitchen and worked tirelessly with Marlene and Sam, keeping the food on the go and getting the washing up done. George helped out for a while and worked hard while he was there, keeping the customers fed and watered, for which they were very grateful I'm sure, as it was so hot that high quantities of liquid were consumed.

We were very lucky to have Allan and Madeline Bills come along to support us with their face painting skills, but in actual fact it was more arm painting skills as most people had some beautiful works of art created on their arms. They very kindly donated the earnings from their hard work to the club.

So all in all we can say that the whole day was a roaring success and Rod and I are really looking forward to another open day next year! And we hope you will allow the prviledge of exuding a little pride for our garden which we like to think is really beautiful. If you were not able to visit on Sunday but would like to come for a wander round, get in touch with John or Rod and we are sure that we can arrange a suitable time for you to visit

A total of £186 was raised for the club funds! So thank you to those who came and helped and to all those who came along to support us. Also to those who gave us some very nice donations.