Quorn Flower & Garden News

Quorn Open Gardens 2000

At 3pm on Sunday 2nd July the streets of the village were teeming with people visiting private gardens opened by courtesy of their owners. At 4pm the streets were empty of people but teeming with hail and lashing rain from a violent thunderstorm which inundated the village. Houses, garages, sheds, shops, doorways provided temporary shelter from the elements, and a Dunkirk spirit prevailed as people were taken in and given the obligatory cup of tea.

Although the weather was not good throughout the weekend, many hundreds still visited the 20 gardens on offer, making this popular event in the village's social calendar its usual success.

Other attractions included 'Rejoice, Rejoice', a flower festival in St Barts Church by Quorn Flower Club and Church Groups, the 'lmages of Quorn' millennium embroidery (now on permanent display in the village hall), and a popular display of enginedriven machinery by Stan Coulsell at Mill Farm.

Open Gardens was a Quorn Millennium Festival Week event and the £1500 raised has been given to the Parish Council to be used for creating new green areas and planters around the village. Many thanks to everyone who contributed to making the event such a success.

Quorn Flower Festival

"Let's have a flower festival," someone said at one of the committee meetings of Quorn Flower Club back in 1999. It seemed a good idea - it could coincide with the Open Gardens Weekend and be part of the Millennium celebrations. There was some concern that we are a very small group. We thought, however, if we asked the church groups to join in we could probably cope - and anyway July 2000 seemed a long way off and none of us need worry about it for a long time yet!

In the event, of course, the planning needed to start almost immediately - we needed to raise funds for the flowers - so "What about having a Rummage Sale"? Although none of us had actually run one before, our attempts were a great success. Most of the church groups we approached agreed to join in, and our appeal for sponsors met with an excellent response.

As the date drew nearer the tempo increased. Many of us had strange looking objects set up in our spare rooms, kitchens, garages, wherever we could find space to practise. " Well what's it supposed to be?' husbands were heard to be saying- and 'When will I be able to prune those shrubs?" as we forbade all cutting back of foliage until after the big event.

The week of the festival dawned - buckets for the flowers were begged, borrowed but hopefully not stolen, foliage was collected not only from our own gardens but from friends and neighbours and even the churchyard, and the work proper began on the Wednesday. The Wimbledon lovers among us had to forsake our tennis and proper meals went out of the window. Two ladies were spotted on the Thursday evening before the festival eating fish and chips at 10pm in the churchyard! "Well we didn't want the church to smell of fish".

On Friday, as we worked away, the church looked so chaotic it was impossible to believe that any order could be restored. Then suddenly the foliage was cleared away, the church was swept and we could see that the church looked magnificent - everyone had pulled out all the stops and the result was stunning - at least we all thought so - but would the visitors?

We couldn't have asked for better support- when the doors opened at 10.30 on Saturday morning people began to come in - a trickle to start with but soon a flood. Everyone seemed to be so appreciative of, not only the beautiful - arrangements, but also the hard work that had gone into it all. The atmosphere was further heightened by the organ recitals.

Then we had a bit of excitement. A family of five arrived and headed straight for the Farnham chapel which had been spectacularly decorated to celebrate the Millennium. it transpired that the father, Stephen, was the son of Judith Farnham and he had brought his wife Cecile and their three children to see the family chapel on their way from Scotland. Stephen remembered attending the chapel as a child and the way in which the Farnham family was ushered into the chapel, the door shut, so being completely segregated from the rest of the congregation.

When the weekend ended all those who had contributed felt it had been a great success. We took over £500 in programme sale and donations and the final donation to the church will probably be in excess of £600.