Something for Everyone and Sunshine too at the SSIB Plant Sale and Tombola!

Combining the SSIB Plant Sale and Tombola with the York House volunteers’ Coffee Morning is a winner for both groups and this year was no exception.

In welcome spring sunshine, a huge array of tempting plants poured out of the car boots as SSIB volunteers arrived for the early shift; and there was hardly time to take them out of their bags and pop them on the tables before eager visitors were buying them. Armfuls of plants acquired, they then moved on to sample further tempting the delights inside York House. Daphne Jones’ tombola had a sumptuous set of prizes to win; Theresa Wedderburn was selling beautiful bouquets of cut flowers from her social enterprise and raffling one in aid of the community gardens; Ruth was back with her seed swap – and then there were the luscious cakes, which York House volunteers had produced to go with the coffee.

Firmly established as an important part of this annual event is the invitation to the Stony Stratford Bard to write and declaim a verse on an appropriate them, and Patrick’s poem was enjoyed by everyone and was delivered with great verve. After the applause had died down for the bard, children gathered round the new edible sharing bed that Theresa Wedderburn had made, and Bruce Klive helped the children to plant a host of vegetables and herbs which will be free for anyone to pick as they pass.

The wood from the first sharing bed had rotted, and it was in too shady a spot, so Theresa created a perennial bed where the sharing vegetable bed had been, and chose a sunnier spot on which to build the new raised bed a few yards further on.

When we counted up the money at the end of the day we found to our delight that we’d made over £450 on the plants and £103 on the tombola and bric-a-brac. All this helps us to keep Stony looking beautiful!