Peterborough charities plant hundreds of purple flowers outside Thorpe Hall hospice to mark fight against Polio

Rotary clubs across the county help to plant millions of purple crocuses every year to raise awareness of their fight to end Polio. The international goodwill organisation has been working to eradicate the disease - which can cause paralysis and sometimes death in young children - for the past 35 years, raising over $2.1 billion.

The purple crocus is the symbol of Rotarty’s campaign to eradicate Polio, with purple the colour of the dye used to mark the fingers of children who have been vaccinated.

A vaccine was introduced to the UK in 1956 and since then, the disease has been almost entirely eradicated worldwide and only remains endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Efforts continue to keep other countries polio free though.

As part of this, Peterborough Rotary Club joined forces with Cambridgeshire based social enterprise Up The Garden Bath to plant 800 purple crocus bulbs beside the main driveway leading to Sue Ryder Thorpe Hall Hospice on Friday (October 23). This is ahead of today’s World Polio Day (October 24).

Several other local organisations were involved on the day, including City College Peterborough, the Prince’s Trust and Community First. The project was also supported by Peterborough Environment City Trust (PECT) and British Sugar Topsoil Ltd, who donated the tools and soil required for the planting.

Peterborough Rotary Club President, Nick Cottingham, said: “We wanted to mark World Polio Day and raise awareness of the ongoing fight to eradicate this curable disease. The purple crocus is the symbol of our fight and Rotary members throughout Britain will be planting 2 million bulbs across their communities.

“We are honoured to be planting ours at one of Peterborough’s most iconic landmarks. We recently worked with Up The Garden Bath on some other gardening activities and felt it important to incorporate their expertise into this exciting project.”

Up The Garden Bath spokesperson, Kez Hayes-Palmer, added: ”We are delighted to be included in this amazing project and are honoured to be asked to help coordinate this event.

“2020 has been a turbulent year for everyone and it will be great to round out this year’s activities with a spectacular collaborative event. We wanted to include as many other groups as possible whilst ensuring we adhere to current government regulations for working outdoors in groups.

“Our ethos is based around gardening, wellbeing and education and we quickly invited groups from Prince’s Trust, City College Peterborough & Community First to get involved.

“We are hoping this is the first of many ongoing events involving Sue Ryder and we look forward to making this an event to remember. We want to prove that - if we all work together and collaborate we can achieve anything.”