Well, what a day that was!
The weather stayed fine, if very hot, for most of the day and the brief shower helped to cool things down a little. The village was full of visitors , many of whom said that they had never visited Keevil before. We received so many positive comments on how pretty the village is and what beautiful gardens had been opened for the event.
St Leonard’s Church is extremely grateful for all the support we received to make this such a successful event.
Here is a long list of ‘thank you’s:
- To the small organising committee Debbie, Rachel, Geoff and Jane (and me – I was told to include myself) who conceived this event. We all worked hard over the last few months to dot all the ‘i’s and cross all the ‘t’s and make sure that everything came together.
- To the garden owners and their supporters who offered to open their gardens for the event and then toiled in their gardens for months to showcase them to best effect on the day. You made this event super special!
- To Sarah for designing all our colourful Midsummer Event posters, AM Print and Norman for printing them and to everyone who distributed the posters and fliers around local churches, pubs and shops.
- To Alex and Juliette for offering the use of their field for car parking.
- To everyone who ran or helped on stalls (too many to list individually, but you know who you are), sold garden or raffle tickets or provided refreshments and to David for providing our floats.
- To those who baked, purchased prizes, Zia Pizza for donating a £50 voucher, to those who wrote quiz questions, painted faces, provided or collected bottles, arranged the beautiful flowers in the Church and organised car parking.
- To Michael and his volunteer bellringers for putting on a demonstration and then inviting people to try out bellringing. The queue was so long that their 2 hour slot turned into 3 hours!
- To Rodney our Church Guide for answering people’s questions about the history of the Church.
- To Margaret for judging the children’s miniature garden competition.
- To those behind the scenes who shifted tables and chairs to the Church in the heat of Friday afternoon : Graham, Geoff and Tony or provided traffic cones to put road signs in : Michael and Pat and to Caroline, chair of FOKS for loaning us the Scarecrow Trail road signs.
If I have failed to mention your contribution, then thank you too! For example I know that a lot of garden owners living close to the open gardens also put a huge amount of work into tidying their gardens in the run up to the event. There was a great sense of community as people worked together cheerfully to make this event such a fun day.
The good news is that we raised nearly £3,000 for St Leonard’s Church. This is a magnificent achievement! Thank you to all of you for the part you played in achieving this.
Gill Gosling, Churchwarden
KEEVIL VILLAGE 