Blooming Marvellous

Every picture tells a story.  This is a happy one.  We reported last year that 11 volunteers from Christ Church, including club member Peter Greene, and Bob Tyrell (Billericay Mayflower), planted 4,000 purple crocuses in the grounds of Christ Church, Billericay, in aid of End Polio Now.  All corms came from the Rotary Foundation.

Rotary has been working to end polio for more than 35 years, and as a founder of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, we’ve reduced polio cases by 99.9% since we started vaccinating children in the Philippines (1979).
It is customary to identify children who have received their polio vaccine by staining one finger purple.  A key Rotary Programme in this End Polio push to eradicate polio around the world is Purple4Polio, recognising this staining by planting millions of purple crocus corms.

Beating The Squirrels

We recently revisited the planting site and were delighted at the show – a host of purple crocuses.  (A far cry from the purple planting disaster in Lake Meadows Children’s Garden some years ago – we planted, squirrels won!)

Our thanks to Margaret and all the volunteers – their efforts have been so well rewarded.