Open Gardens 2009

Every year, I help my friend to open her garden to the public for our village "Open Gardens Day". We not only open the garden, but sell tea and home made cakes and also do a craft stall. I make cards and such for the craft stall, the large majority of which feature my photography of the garden, whilst my friend is a watercolour artist, selling originals and prints of her paintings. Here are a few of this years pictures...




This is Vernon the Vole, some children visiting the garden came running to me saying "Bring the camera quick - we've found a vole". I followed them up the path to find this little vole sitting next to the path, surrounded by visitors, quite nonchalantly eating his afternoon snack. Even when I lay on the path about a foot away from him (now with me surrounded by onlookers) he still didn't pause.

Once I had the photographs, the children asked if I would make a photo card to sell on the craft stall the following day. I said I would, but only if they came up with a name for him. They went off to have a think about it and five minutes later came running back down the path shouting 'We've got a name - it's Vernon the Vole". So Vernon it was.

True to my promise, that evening I made 3 photo greeting cards featuring Vernon and they all sold in the first couple of hours. So in future I will be taking my design advice from the under 10 year old sector of the market!

The lavender smelled gorgeous this year and every time someone brushed past, a beautiful waft of lavender was released. The weather stayed fair for us the entire weekend and we hundreds of visitors each day. The kitchen staff (Lovely husband, stepson and stepson's girlfriend) were kept busy making teas, coffees, squash and serving Pip's famous chocolate cake. The craft stall and the kitchen were in competition for who would make the most money. Crafts won on the Saturday, but Tea and Cakes won on the Sunday. Over the whole weekend the craft stall made about £120 with Tea and Cakes pipping us at the post with about £130 (all going to our village church fund).
Overall with ticket sales and the efforts of the other gardens that opened, we made over £2000 for St.Marys!

And finally some views of the garden and a look at our craft stall, both of which took a lot of hard work to achieve, so well done us!