Planting Purple Crocuses

Rotary has been working to eradicate 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 in 1979. 

There have only been nine cases of wild polio this year, all in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It is customary in endemic countries to identify children who have received their polio vaccine by staining one of their fingers purple. A key Rotary Program in this End Polio push to eradicate polio around the world is Purple4Polio, recognising this staining by planting millions of purple crocus corms. 

As part of this effort in the U.K., we decided to plant 4,000 purple crocus corms, and to sow them around the Billericay sign on Stock Road.

Best Laid Plans

A cold afternoon on November 7 found Rtn. Peter Greene and Julian De’ath with a hired a turf-cutter hard at work cutting strips of turfs around the Billericay sign in preparation for planting this year’s crocus corms (all from Rotary Foundation) for Purple for Polio.

November 9 dawned – it was dry!  The sun even came out at times! Six members of the club – President Roger Kettle, Peter Greene, Les Sheppard, Brian Wellman, Bob Godfrey and David Holroyd all gathered at the Billericay sign ready for work.  

It should have been easy, a swift placing of a spade, the lifting of the turfs and scattering of the crocus corms.  But in between the cutting on Tuesday and Thursday’s planting, the skies had opened and the ground was sodden.  Instead of lifting up six foot of turf in one go as last year, the turfs broke apart and every individual foot of grass had to be separately eased up out of the way.  It seemed to take ages and it could have been a disaster!

Crucial Crocuses

Two teams were formed – Les, Bob and David in one, and Roger, Brian and Peter in the other, with Les’s team at the back of the sign, and Roger’s team at the front.  With the corms and topsoil placed ready, the two teams started work, lifting the first turfs slowly and speedily scattering the crocus corms on the earth below, and then spreading them out for optimum growth.  Then they added some topsoil; and tamped the turf back down again. 

Then on to the next section – lift, plant, spread out, add soil, replace turf and tamp down again.  And so it went on until all the crocuses had been planted.  Expecting a marathon job, we were all delighted that working together we managed to get all 4,000 – yes, 4,000 – corms planted and the grass replaced and stamped down in an hour. Some going!  Well done Guys!

It worked out well in the end. Now we cross our fingers and wait for a purple Spring show.

Tremendous Achievement

Rotarian Peter Greene, who organised the planting, reports:
“Cutting the grass the day before should have made the job easier, but the rain on Wednesday almost negated that effort so it was a tremendous achievement to have planted all the corms so quickly”.

Special signs were commissioned to record the planting of the crocuses and Rotary’s involvement and will be added when the crocuses (hopefully) flower in the spring