Harrogate and District Soroptimists have had a very busy 3 days at the Harrogate Autumn Flower Show at the Great Yorkshire Show Ground. Over 37000 people visited the show and apart from heavy rain on the Friday morning the sun shone bright. Our Meru Garden recreated a little bit of Meru in Yorkshire. It tells the story of how the Meru Women’s Garden project supports women to develop the skills and knowledge to create a ‘garden’ that is productive and will give them an income as well as food to feed their families.
We manned our garden throughout the 3 days. We met some fantastic people from all over the world including people from Kenya and those who used to live in Kenya. We were delighted to hear from them how authentic they thought the garden was. We waited with baited breath to hear the outcome of the judging – Our garden was certainly different from any others there – we were so delighted to get a Silver Award. It really made all the effort worth while even though that wasn’t our primary purpose of being there.
It was great team effort that allowed the garden to grow from an opportunity to reality in little over 3 months. We found out much more about Meru Women’s Garden Project. Tapped into the expertise of our members who enjoy gardening and the creative talents of those who enjoy designing. We found sponsors – Daleside Nurseries– one of the local nurseries let us borrow apple trees and a water tub, Marks and Spencer’s let us borrow a mannaquin, Hadopots kindly sent us some black plastic growing bags – just like those used in Meru; Enid Taylor printed our Flyers for free, JTS Fair Food – Fine Food supplied the Meru Herb Jams and Pasta Sauces and Stainton Landscapes helped us clear the site.
Our Primary purpose was to raise awareness about the Meru Women’s Garden Project and about our organisation. We met hundreds of people over the 3 days. We had a low key donation bowl with ‘Help us raise £300 for a toolkit – ‘Your small change can make a big difference to the lives of women and children in Meru. We raised a fantastic £600 along with £120 in Prize money – enough money for 2 toolkits and more. A surprise donation that matched our Small Change collection has enabled us to raise enough money for 5 Meru Gardens – halfway to our aim of raising £3000.
There is no denying that it was hard work in preparing and putting the garden together. President Pat Shore demonstrated her excellent leadership skills – keeping the team focused and clear of what each and everyone one of us was doing. A great buzz of achievement