Community gardeners set to grow and share millions of flowers to mark milestone anniversary
This year marks 60 years of RHS Britain in Bloom, the UK’s largest community gardening campaign. To celebrate, the RHS will be sharing more than two million ‘friendship flower seeds’ with community groups up and down the country.
The flowers will include sweet peas, cosmos, nigella, gypsophila, rudbeckia and zinnia and will be grown by the 3,000 community gardening groups that make up RHS Britain in Bloom and its grass roots version It’s Your Neighbourhood.
“The 60th anniversary is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate community gardening,” said Kay Clark, RHS community development manager. “We’re providing the seeds as a thank you to all our existing groups and the hundreds of thousands of passionate volunteers who work with plants year-round to strengthen their communities and improve the local environment. We’re encouraging people to grow some of these flowers for wildlife, and share some as bouquets with friends and other people who deserve them in their communities.
We hope these gestures of friendship will inspire even more people to get growing, too.”
The anniversary celebrations will also see the RHS gathering and sharing stories of friendships formed through gardening, to encourage people across the UK to join in a
