Bulb Planting Event
Every year Chatham Maritime Trust, together with the Gavin Jones landscaping team, invites residents to participate in a planting day on St. Mary’s Island. The last of these events took place on 22nd October 2022 along the Central Walk. Bulbs and gardening tools were supplied; the only thing needed from residents was enthusiasm!
St Mary’s Island is a vision of purple as crocuses start to bloom this Spring. In the last few years local Rotary members have planted 80,000 crocus corms in support of End Polio Now, Rotary’s programme to wipe out polio all around the world.
These beautiful purple crocuses here around the St Mary’s Island Community Centre, Central Walk, Finsborough Down, Atlas Place and several roundabouts and verges in a sea of vibrant purple are just one group of the millions of corms planted across Great Britain and Ireland as part of Rotary’s Purple4Polio campaign.
Rotary’s ‘Purple4Polio’ campaign raising money for Rotary End Polio Now is so-called because purple is the colour of the dye placed on the little finger on the left hand of a child to show that they have been immunised against polio.
Rotary has helped immunise over 2.5 billion children against polio since 1985, reducing the number of countries where the disease is prevalent from 125 to just 2 -Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The incidence of polio has plummeted from about 350,000 cases a year to just 30 cases in 2022 and none at all so far in 2023