If I told you that receiving a jar of flowers with her shopping inspired a lady to get out her brushes and begin painting again, I think you’d be hard pressed to believe it. But that happened. A small act of kindness for someone who was feeling alone and unmotivated during the pandemic, was a reminder that she’s not forgotten and that somebody out here cares.
She created a beautiful painting of her flowers and sent it back to us at Clem’s Garden. It was a lovely gesture, a thank you, a reawakening of pride in something she hadn’t done for some time that she wanted to share. And it made me proud too.
Clem’s Garden was set up as an organic cut flower social enterprise, looking especially to offer volunteering opportunities to people over 50 who don’t have any children or grandchildren. It’s a place where our talents can be nurtured, we can use our care in a different way and we can build a supportive network. I love that we come together to share time and conversation, and that it gives us a positive mission to focus on together.
We hope to inspire kindness, encouraging others to find a reason to knock on neighbours’ doors and look out for each other. We all contribute to the success of Clem’s Garden, our customers love our gorgeous eco-flowers, and all our profits are donated to other local community projects.
With our network of volunteers and by partnering with other local organisations and mutual aid groups during the pandemic, we donated jars of flowers which were distributed to people who were alone, lots of whom were shielding. 550 jars of flowers were delivered alongside people’s shopping. When word got around about our flower drops, other people in the neighbourhood got involved by saving and cleaning their empty food jars for us to use too!
And I guess that’s what we do at Clem’s Garden. We try to help create lots of little circles of kindness in our local community.
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Thank you to Vicky for sharing this story after participating in one of our “How can more people come together to make local places better?” online workshops for Kirklees citizens.
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