November newsletter 2025

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🏆 Blooming Brilliant News!

We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that Poppy Community Garden won two awards at the RHS South and South East in Bloom competition this year!

• In the “It’s Your Neighbourhood” category, we achieved the top level 5 – Outstanding rating.

• In the “It’s Your Community” category, we not only won GOLD, but were also crowned champions of the group! 🌟

Michelle, Izzy and Michael attended the awards ceremony at RHS Wisley to collect our certificates and represent the garden. These awards are a reflection of everyone’s hard work, creativity, and community spirit.

🎃 Spooky Fun at the Garden!

Our 3rd annual Spooktacular took place on 1 November 2025, and what a frightfully fun day it was!

Highlights included:
🧙‍♀️ Trick or Treat with our resident garden witch, Grottybags
🧙 Spooky Story Time with Wispy the Wizard
👻 A scary scavenger hunt
🎯 Classic games like Hook a Pumpkin, Tin Can Alley, and What’s in the Box?
📸 A Halloween photo competition
🍬 A sweet raffle.

Our volunteers had monstrous fun dressing up and helping create such a magical (and slightly spooky!) atmosphere.

♻️ Pumpkin Composting Success

Our annual Pumpkin Composting drive is now underway and will run until 14 November. Bring along any carved or unwanted pumpkins to the garden for composting.

At the time of writing, we’ve already composted 278 pumpkins! That’s an incredible effort, and it means we’ll need to buy far less compost next year. Thank you to everyone who’s taken part so far. Keep them coming! Together we’re turning spooky leftovers into garden gold!

🌿 Seasonal Gardening Updates

With the clocks changing, we’ve wrapped up our Monday evening sessions for the year. A massive thank you to the Monday Crew who have cleared many wheelbarrows of weeds, filled hundreds of watering cans and planted and maintained rather a lot of plants! We'll be back next year once the clocks change.

But don’t worry, our regular sessions continue on:
🪴 Saturdays & Tuesdays, 10:00am – 12:30pm

We’d love to see you there!

🌸 Garden Improvements

We’re always growing and improving the space, and this month we’re excited to share two lovely updates:

• A set of new hopscotch slabs have been added to the sensory area. Once they are painted, they will create a playful and interactive feature for visitors of all ages because let's face it, you're not going to be able to walk past it without having a go!

• A new base has been laid for a material greenhouse, which will soon help us overwinter some of our plants and prepare for next year’s growing season.

🌼 Thank You!

As we move into the quieter winter months, we want to thank every one of you, volunteers, visitors, neighbours, and friends, for helping Poppy Community Garden thrive. Your enthusiasm and community spirit are what make our garden so special.