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Summer of 2026
Why must we endure a village without flowers this summer? - The question we asked ourselves after the council pulled the funding for village summer plants.
As a charity that helps out the local community, we thought this was a perfect task for us to undertake. Brodie and Michelle, our two keen gardeners from The St Lawrence Hall SCIO team, set about raising as much money as they could through crowdfunding, and they were blown away by raising over £800 in just a week. This showed that the community clearly considered it a priority too, as they surpassed our £500 target in no time.
Next, it was time to speak to local businesses and garden centres who supply plants and see if they could do us the best deal possible, with the hope to try and stretch out our pot of money as far as we could. We were so greatful to receive discounts from Morrisions in Inverurie, who we got a lot of the annual bedding plants from and also Kellockbank Garden Centre, who very kindly supplied us with heavily discounted compost to fill all our village planters with and also some gorgeous perennials, which will flower and look beautiful for years to come.
Once the frost passed, we gathered all the plants and lovely new donated pots and planters from local farmers and residents—including some new handmade wooden planters made especially for us—we set about planting them up with the plants which we collected. The village has 20 pots in total, so this kept us busy for quite a few hours, but the finished product was so worth it!
Next was the big task of moving the 20 planted up planters into their new locations which sounded like a perfect job for our local "yes man" Sandy and his tractor from the St Lawrence Hall SCIO Team. Placing the planters and seeing how they looked was great fun; that's where Michelle's eye came in handy. "Just a bit to the right," "Actually, back where it was is fine," she called to Sandy as he carefully moved them into place.
Although watering the pots has been a bit of a challenge, Old Rayne Village is looking gorgeous with all the planters thriving. We are already planning for next year's planters and hope to grow many of the flowers and plants ourselves, hopefully saving money in the process. We have also been looking into various watering solutions to try and keep the pots looking as good as possible for the entire summer and, so looking at plants which we can grow that will take drought conditions. Flowers make you feel happy and feedback from the Old Rayne Community has been extremely positive. Can we make the village look even better next year? Grow along with us and help out where you can!
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