Open Day 2015
Open Day 2015 – Sunday 14th June.
Previously, we’ve held our Open Day, part of the annual London Open Garden Squares Weekend, which is always on the second weekend in June, on a Saturday. This year, the #OGSW15 fell during the annual Penge Festival programme of celebrations and the Penge Fete was also on the very same Saturday. It appeared that the Saturday was going to be an extremely busy day, with many other local events all competing for attention. The decision was taken, therefore, to hold our Open Day 2015 on the Sunday as an experiment. The decision paid off, giving us a much higher attendance than ever before, especially as we also became a part of the Penge Festival umbrella of local events.
Sunday 14th June
Open Day 2015 didn’t get off to a very good start when we discovered that vandals had broken into the greenhouse again during the night and destroyed many of the plants that we had hoped to sell. We didn’t dwell on it, there was too much else to get on with.
We had also made a decision this year to focus on the core activities which from our previous experience we knew worked. These were the Children’s Activities, the Plant Sale, and the Cakes and Refreshments stall. We also had a return visit from Nik Trigkatzis the Tai Chi man [nik@thewayofshiatsu.com]
Plant Sale
After winning the fight with the slugs this year (if not with the vandals) there was a huge display of plants for sale.
Cakes and Refreshments
All kinds of Cakes and Scones and Brownies.
Children’s Activities
Treasure Hunt, Face painting, Making Bird Feeders, Painting Wooden Plaques, Colouring In, and fabulous Balloon shaped animals, rainbows and pirate swords.
Another successful event, the whole day wet really well. The gardens really did look splendid – we got lots of compliments about our efforts; the place seemed to have a real buzz about it, and it was so good to see so many families in there enjoying themselves.
From our calculations 105 adults and 57 children attended and 34 people signed the Save Our Parks petition. 18 were from SE20 and 7 from BR postcodes and the remaining 9 from elsewhere (ie SE25, SE6 and further afield one from Enfield and one Crowhurst!)
Our Treasurer is still totting up the takings, but it’s safe to say that we are in a substantial profit.
And our special thanks to Ching from Bromley Green Gym for the face painting and the balloon modelling.