Recently we opened our garden for the Hospice in the Weald open garden scheme, along with four others. People paid £5 and got a sticker enabling them to walk around all five, which were in walking distance of each other.
We each had stalls that had different things on them in order to raise money - one garden had tea and cake, another had whole cakes for sale, and ours had a craft stall. Therefore, I had to make lots of products to sell! It was a really rainy day to start with, which looked worrying, and we had to do an emergency evacuation of products into the shed:
I made some lavender hearts, which were heart shaped pieces of fabric, sewn together, stuffed with lavender, with a button on the front and twine around the button in order to hang it up.
Also, I used old jars to make a variety of products. I put together some jars of sweets, I mixed some thyme and lavender bath salts into some others, and with the last ones left I decorated them with buttons around the top in order to turn them into tealight holders or vases:
I did this by threading buttons onto thin wire, and making a handle out of some thicker wire and some pliers. The gravel in the bottom and the tealights we already had, and they add a nice touch.
Finally, my sister painted some beautiful cards, and my mum and I made some wool covered bottles. They would be ideal vases or general decorations, and they are incredibly unique:
On the day, it only rained for an hour and a half or so, so after an hour of drying time for the outside table (which was soaking wet) we could move the stock that was left outside. This increased sales because people could see what was available, and it made it look very bright and appealing!
Inside:
Outside:
A big thank you to anyone who came along - in total we raised nearly £2,500 across the five gardens, £100 from my stall alone! This is a brilliant achievement which will hopefully be very beneficial to the Hospice.
