Loitering Within Tent

‘Sherborne In Bloom’ is our town’s entry in the prestigious ‘Britain In Bloom’ competition and this financial appeal is addressed to all business leaders in the town.

Last year, Sherborne won the Gold for ‘Best Small Town’ in the South West. We also won three other impressive trophies for gardens in the town. This success has spurred us to go for gold again this year because another gold award would qualify us to be judged at national level. We believe that our town is well placed to compete nationally and, if we were to be successful, it would be a major boost to the town’s reputation and prestige, not to mention the local economy.

Judging day this year is Thursday 17 July from 10:00am – 12:30pm. Two judges from the Royal Horticultural Society will be escorted around the town and they will judge what they see according to some very strict judging criteria.

The plan this year is to take the judges round the town a different route from last year: in 2007 we started at the Castle Orangery; this year we want to finish there. We know from talking to last year’s judges that they were bowled over by the Castle: they had never been there before and were truly very impressed.

It was their suggestion that this year we might end up there – and what the judges want, the judges get!

Castle Estates have generously ‘donated’ the Orangery to us for the day. The idea is to present the prizes to the winners of the local ‘Growing for Gold’ competitions in the Orangery and then to lay on a lunch for the judges after they have completed their tour of the town.

Which is where the tent comes in. We would like to invite about 100 people, including the sponsors, the prize winners, the local great and good plus many of the dedicated gardeners (who actually get their nails dirty making the town look stunning) to a lunch in a marquee up at the Castle.

This would be a wonderful ‘thank-you’ to the prize winners and gardeners who deserve so much of our thanks for the efforts (mostly voluntary) that they put in.

We have no money to hire a tent. The cost is about £2,000 for the marquee and the hire of tables, chairs and the accessories necessary to host a sit-down buffet lunch for 100 guests.

We are looking for sponsorship to pay for the marquee and we are appealing for donations in multiples of £250 a piece.

Please help us send the judges (and all the hard-working gardeners) away from the day with happy memories of Sherborne In Bloom.

Please could you contribute £250 (or £500 or even £750) to this appeal? We know that times are getting hard and that you have many demands on your charitable donations, but we truly believe that this one day could make a tremendous difference to Sherborne’s future. Your donation could help make it happen for so many people.

Donations and enquiries to:

Gillian Gunner gillian@sherborneinbloom.com, telephone 01935 817365
Caz Rowland cazinsherborne@aol.com, telephone 01935 816961

Thank you.