Celebrating Rotary's End Polio Campaign

Rotary clubs around the world plant millions of purple crocus corms to celebrate Rotary's campaign to protect children and rid the world of Polio, with over 1.5 million crocuses planted last year in Great Britain & Ireland. This campaign has spread all around the world. Rotary is a founder of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and its efforts have reduced polio cases by 99.9% since it started vaccinating children 45 years ago.

This October there have only been 34 reported cases in Afghanistan/Pakistan. As part of this effort, for the fourth successive year we planted 4,000 purple crocus corms at Buttsbury Primary School with the active help of the Buttsbury RotaKids.

Preparation

A relatively cool and damp midday on October 14 found Rtn. Peter Greene and Julian De’ath on the lawn in front of the junior school with a hired turf-cutter.  Julian was soon hard at work cutting strips of turfs in the lawn ready for Wednesday’s planting.  Our thanks go to Julian as he had to rearrange his whole day in order to be free to help us.  

October 15 dawned with weather much like the day before.  Six members of the club – President Stephen King, Vice-President Nick Street, Peter Greene, Les Sheppard, Brian Wellman, and Mike Sinclair, all gathered at the school by 10.00 a.m. ready for work.    Even Peter Strong. so recently discharged from hospital after a serious health issue, wanted to be on hand to provide moral support.

Thankfully, the ground was dry and it was relatively easy to lift the turfs to expose the ground underneath.  A swift placing of a spade, a little leverage and very soon a whole strip of lawn had been lifted and rolled out the way. 

Next step, collect the crocus corms in buckets and scatter them in the exposed earth.  Much easier than last year when 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! But we persevered and overcame those problems. 

This year, we quickly covered the exposed crocus corms with topsoil, and rolled the turfs back on top to cover them.  Tamping the edges down as we went.

Crucial Crocuses

We did the first row, and after being joined by eight children for the Buttsbury Primary School RotaKids club, we split into teams.  We did the lifting of the turfs to expose the bare earth, and then the RotaKids picked up handfuls of Crocus corms and scattered them in the exposed earth.  Returning to spread them out evenly across the whole row for optimum growth.  Then we jointly added some topsoil; and tamped the turf back down again.  The RotaKids were very enthusiastic in the “tamping down”.

We had expected a marathon job, so 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 just over half an hour.  That’s some going!  Well done Guys!  Well done Buttsbury RotaKids!

It all worked out very well.  Now we cross our fingers and wait for a purple Spring show. 

Tremendous Achievement

Rotarian Peter Greene, who organised the planting, reports: “The plan to cut the grass the day before certainly made the job easier, lifting of the turfs was no challenge.  Even so, it was a tremendous achievement to have planted all the corms so quickly.  I am very grateful to all members of the Rotary Club of Billericay and the Buttsbury RotaKids who volunteered to help.”

Special signs have been commissioned and printed to record the planting of the crocuses and the Rotary Club of Billericay and Buttsbury Primary School RotaKids involvement, and will be added before the crocuses (hopefully) flower in the spring.

It should certainly be quite a show!