THE TEESSIDE BRANCH PHOTO GALLERY
   

Plant Sales

   

Hill Street Shopping Centre, Middlesbrough

Selling plants at Saltburn (2005)

   
The Branch holds several sales each year in various locations including botanical gardens, shopping centres, market stalls, charity fairs and shows. In most cases, as well as a range of individual plants of varying sizes and prices, ready made bowl gardens, books and sometimes packets of seed are also on offer.

 

Hill Street Shopping Centre, Middlesbrough

Free advice is always available

Hill Street Shopping Centre, Middlesbrough

 

There is always free advice available from our volunteers, though sometimes conditions are less conducive to customers stopping to talk and ask questions - the two pictures immediately below were taken at Yarm Charities Fair on an particularly inclement day. It was breezy and never stopped raining; all day the area where the stall was pitched was under the threat of a red flood warning with the nearby River Tees in serious danger of inundating the town. Indeed the Police did eventually call a slightly early halt to the proceedings as the waters rose in the adjoining side streets! The pictures below them were taken on a much better day a few years later.
   

Yarm Charities Fair (2000)

Yarm Charities Fair (2000)

   

Yarm Charities Fair (2007)

Yarm Charities Fair (2007)

   

Durham University Botanic Gardens (2002)

Durham University Botanic Gardens (2002)

   

Cleveland Show (2013)

Stokesley Show (2013)

   

Plant sales are extremely important to the Branch. They have several major benefits including:-

  • Publicity - literally hundreds of members of the public are spoken to over the course of a season, thus raising public awareness of who we are and what we do

  • Recruitment - contact with so many people is a valuable source of new members

  • Fundraising - a considerable sum is raised each year, this is used to fund Branch activities (principally room rent and speaker's expenses)

  • Sale of plants - the sale of good quality plants to the public, at extremely fair prices, accompanied by free advice, encourages more people to grow these fascinating plants

 

Guisborough Town Fair (2009)

   

Having fun at Saltburn (2005)

Saltburn Charities Fair (2005)

   

Hartlepool Horticultural Show (2006)

Hartlepool Horticultural Show (2006)

   
The quality of our sales stock and of the presentation of the plants has improved dramatically over the years. The two pictures below indicate an improvement between 1988 and 1992, but the more recent pictures show the quality of presentation we now try to achieve. We are also now more self-sufficient, having purchased our own market stall, complete with roof and "skirt".
   

Plant sales at Cleveland Show (1992)

Plant sale in Middlesbrough (1988)

   
Our sales plants are currently grown in a dedicated greenhouse as shown in the following two pictures:-
   
Sales plants flourishing in their own greenhouse Young plants being grown for future sales
   

Photographs by Viv Brooks, John Ellis, Brian Gleeson, Betty Unwin and Brian Unwin.

   

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