Taking time to smell the flowers after Longparish's Gardens Festival

July's Hill & Valley carried a quick overview of the Gardens Festival, so as to meet the printing deadline.

Now it is good to take a lingering look back at what a wonderful event it was for Longparish.   Everyone involved agrees it was a great success, with all the plans working out as intended, and raising a fantastic sum of £8,500 over the weekend for the Longparish School & Community Project.  

What could not be predicted was if the weather would treat us kindly, and if enough visitors would come along to make all the preparations worthwhile, or conversely, whether we would have more visitors than could be managed!

In fact it was just right on both counts – the sun shone, and 800 visitors came, and enjoyed the delights of Longparish's gardens and the village environment, gained advice on plants, with many people expressing a desire to return another year.

Apart from these obvious good results another great achievement was that so many people across the village, and from outside it, pooled their time and special talents to the make it a success, while drawing together even more as a community and making new friends.

As over 70 people were involved it would not be practical to list all the names but, as well as the 14 garden openers who were at the heart of the event, there were those who devised and planned it; villagers helped in so many ways; staff and teachers from the school; parents living outside the school catchment area; organists played in the church; church floral arrangements and a specially themed Sunday service; neighbours from Hurstbourne Priors assisted; the silent auction; the entertaining gardening lecture and supper, all of which came together to make it happen, as can be seen from the garden photos on our website.

So everyone is now catching their breath, enjoying their lovely gardens, which have had a little extra TLC lavished on them this year, and reflecting on how much fun such a fantastic joint event has generated within Longparish.

Our ‘fish', on display outside the school, shows the overall fundraising figure for the Project at the start of school holidays as being £103,000 - with more still coming in!   The figure will next be updated at the start of the school term in September.   Well done everyone.

Cheryl Dowler

 

 

Computer Wanted

Can you help Longparish Playgroup, please?  

Now that we have moved from our damp Portacabin into our new temporary accommodation we'd like to use some software for tots to improve the children's computer skills.   We have some e-Learning credits to buy the software so all we need is a basic computer in working order to run it on.   Do you have an old Pentium one which you aren't using because you have upgraded?   If you do and you can give it to Playgroup we'll certainly put it to good use.

Thank you very much.

Maggie Barber, Supervisor

Tel 720459, email playgroup@longparish.org.uk  

 

PARISH PLAN

 

Many thanks to everyone who has handed in the Parish Plan questionnaire.   If you have not yet had time to do so it is not too late.   Please hand in