The Garden Room Events 2024

Ashby Community Bring & Buy Plant Sale

Saturday 11 May 9:30-11.00am at Holy Trinity Ashby, Kilwardby Street, LE65 2FR.

Want to grow something beautiful this summer?

We'd love to invite you to come to our Bring & Buy plant sale on the morning of Saturday 11 May.

Maybe you are looking for some new plants for your garden or allotment - or have some spare plants to donate that we can sell, to help us raise funds for the project.

You are welcome to bring along any plants you’d like to donate on the morning, but please don’t worry if you don’t have any plants to bring. Just come along and join in!

We’ll also be running a pop-up cafe at the back of church, serving free tea and coffee and homemade cake.

This event will be our main spring fundraiser. All plant sales and donations received will help us grow more good things in our community this year.

Sow Good Update

We are so grateful to everyone who has offered to grow or donate plants for us this year to grow in our growing spaces, or sell to help us raise funds for The Garden Room.

Whether you have sowed some of our varieties from the community seed bank, sowed extra seeds for us from your own supplies when you have been sowing your own, or divided garden plants early in the season to multiply what you have, in order to donate them, we're so thankful for your help.

Ugh… I planned to sow, but life/the weather got in the way!

We're genuinely grateful to those of you who planned to sow seeds for us, but for various reasons haven't been unable to do so - or the seedlings you had sown simply didn't thrive.

We know from experience that life sometimes gets in the way of what we hoped to do - but your intention to help us is deeply appreciated.

Like everyone else, we're overjoyed in the recent improvement in the weather, but until the last couple of weeks, it has been pretty awful, hasn't it?! The last few months have made for tough growing conditions for everyone.

I do have some seedlings for you, but they are still very small

If you have sown some seeds for us, but your seedlings are currently still very small and not yet ready to be donated, please don't worry.

Many of us have sown seeds later than usual this year due to the weather - and the weather has also meant that many seeds sown around the usual time are not yet as far along as they would normally be.

You're not alone. We currently have lots of still very tiny snapdragon seedlings ourselves.

We're excited to announce that we will be having a second Bring & Buy plant sale on Sat 8 June, by which time many of these tiny seedlings will have grown on into young plants and be ready to be planted straight out in the garden.

Please do feel free to hang onto any tiny seedlings you have grown for us, but are not yet ready to donate. You'd be so welcome to bring them along to our second plant sale in June.

Bring & Buy Plant Sale - Saturday 11 May 9:30-11:00am at Holy Trinity Ashby

If your plants are ready to donate now, we would love to invite you to bring them along to our Bring & Buy plant sale this Saturday morning. 

There is no need to label individual pots where you have lots of one variety, but please label at least one of each group of plants of the same variety, so that we know what they are!

Parking on Plant Sale Day

On street parking is available close to the church, but unfortunately, we do not have parking available
on site. 

If you have a lot of plants to bring, and would appreciate some assistance in transporting them from your car to church on the morning of the plant sale please park your car on the street nearby and come and ask us for some help. Someone will be available to help any time from 9am. One of our volunteers would be glad to bring our trolley to your car to help you unload the plants, if you have more than you are able to carry.

Can't make it to the plant sale on Saturday?

If you have plants ready to donate this month, but are unable to come along to the plant sale on Sat 11 May please get in touch and we will arrange another time for you to drop them off with us.

What will happen to the plants I donate?

All the plants which are donated to us will be received on arrival by one of our volunteers.

We will put all plants we can use ourselves to one side immediately - and these plants will not be offered for sale.

Our intention is to plant everything we can use and can find room for, in the next couple of weeks.

Plants will be grown on either in one of our growing spaces, or in extra spaces where we may be able to secure permission to grow this year.

We are looking forward to growing lots of flowers and food which we can give away and share with our community this summer.

Where we receive plants that we are unable to use ourselves (eg. If we are given 100x courgette plants, that's too many - even for us!) we may keep some back and offer others for sale.

What will happen to plants that we can't use and remain unsold at the end of the plant sale?

If the plants do not need to be planted urgently AND we can care for them appropriately for a few weeks, we may keep some of them to sell at our June Bring & Buy Plant Sale on Sat 8 June.

If their current life stage means they really do need to be planted out in the next couple of weeks - or we simply have more of a variety than we are able to care for, we may donate some to other community groups or organisations.

We know of a couple of plant stalls at local events which will be happening in Ashby later in May - and we are really keen to support their fundraising efforts with our surplus plant stock, rather than see really good plants go to waste.

Plant Sale Prices

We believe in living generously.

It's been our experience since we started The Garden Room that where we offer seeds for free, or plants for sale at affordable prices and free tea, coffee and cake, we often end up receiving more in donations than we would have received, if we had charged average garden centre prices, charged for entry to our seed swap, or asked people to pay for their cup of tea. 

Selling plants affordably also often leads to people paying that forward wherever they can - and helping us in other ways, eg. with their time, gifts and skills.

If you see any plants you have donated for sale at prices which you feel are lower than you might have hoped, please know that it's not because we do not value what you have grown.

It's because the real value of what you have grown is so much more than its price tag.

In a world that desperately needs more beauty - and more good things to eat, connecting more plants with more people can only be a good thing!

Selling plants affordably so that prices are within reach for most people who might want to grow them helps us build The Garden Room community by making gardening accessible to more people.

Whilst we run our Bring & Buy Plant Sales partly to help us raise money, the money is never the most important thing.

All that said, we're so grateful when people come along, bring and buy lots of plants, have plenty of tea and cake and are able to give generously.

We can't wait to see what you have grown for us - and look forward to seeing you soon.

Kind Regards,

Sarah

Sarah Phillips
Project Co-ordinator
The Garden Room
 

How to get in touch

Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. The best way to reach us by email thegardenroom@trinityashby.net or by texting The Garden Room mobile: 07763 004944.  
 

About Us

These events are being hosted by local community gardening project The Garden Room - and are part of a series of Saturday morning events in 2024. We run two growing spaces in Ashby where we grow cut flowers and fresh fruit and veg that we share with our community, to bring joy and make people smile. We welcome new volunteers and if you’d like to grow with us this year, we’d love to meet you. Find out more about The Garden Room