Spine-tingling tales in the greenhouse (photo: Colin Foy).

Greenhouse project needs your vote!

The Alexandra Park Greenhouse Group is busily engaged in fund-raising for its project to restore the greenhouse and wants your vote in a competition offering a substantial prize. Nick Terdre reports.

The group is bidding for up to £25,000 in a competition run by the Aviva Community Fund: voting remains open until Friday 18 November. It also took part in Tesco’s Bags of Help initiative, which offers a grant of £8,000 to £12,000; voting closed last weekend.

All funds raised will go towards the group’s project of restoring the 1930s greenhouse so that it can be used for community and horticultural events, but the project includes some big-ticket items like repairing the greenhouse’s cast iron frame. Two local blacksmiths recently began work on the frame.

The group also holds regular plant sales. One at the end of October raised a welcome £63, and another was held in early November.

Halloween fun

A Halloween event on 31 October also helped to raise the group’s profile. Some 30 youngsters dressed as witches, vampires, skeletons, bats and other creepy characters assembled in the park, with their parents, for an afternoon of fun.

Spooky parents too! (Photo: Colin Foy).

A meal in Eat@thePark café was followed by face-painting, after which the party repaired to the greenhouse to hear a spine-tingling tale recounted by ‘witch’, Audra Fraser and ‘wizard’, Ryan Ormonde. The afternoon ended with a ride aboard the park’s miniature trains.

Visitors to the event included the deputy mayor of Hastings, Cllr Nigel Sinden, and Nick Hennessy, a borough council park ranger, who both joined in the fun by wearing masks distributed by the organisers.

“It was really fun,” said Linda Pearson, chairman of the group. “We were showcasing the greenhouse to let the community see the potential of the building.”

Do you want to vote in the Aviva Community Fund competition? Go to their website, register and cast your vote (in fact you get up to 10) for Alexandra Park Greenhouse Group’s project, Building for a Horticultural Future.

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