Hello there! We’re Sally and Lloyd, husband and wife gardening enthusiasts and the pair behind HappyPotting.
This year, we decided to challenge ourselves and apply to create a Beautiful Border at the Gardeners’ World Autumn Fair.
We’re not professional garden designers, just two people who love gardening, learning as we go and encouraging others to give things a try.
Our little “why not?” turned into an incredible few months of growing, planning and fundraising for Beat and ultimately a Silver Merit Award that we still can’t quite believe!
When my husband Lloyd and I were given the opportunity to create a Beautiful Border at the Gardeners’ World Autumn Fair, I knew I wanted the experience to mean something beyond simply building a garden.
Beat is a charity incredibly close to my heart. I have lived experience of an eating disorder and understand the importance of recovery, so supporting a charity helping people affected by eating disorders felt especially meaningful.
“HappyPotting” has always been about being curious. To learn without needing to be perfect and to find little things to look forward to.
So, when we began creating our border, it felt right to use this wonderfully positive experience to raise money and awareness for something that matters so deeply to me.
We decided to fundraise in a way that felt completely natural to us really!
Alongside creating our Beautiful Border, we held a plant sale and invited people to support Beat. Those sales alone raised an amazing £200 (and we’re still counting!), which still feels quite incredible. We also made a round of gift boxes prior to the event for people to buy and gift for loved ones (or themselves!).
What I loved most was that it never felt separate from what we were already doing.
Gardening became a little way of starting conversations, bringing people together and contributing to something important.
The encouragement from Beat has been so lovely too. Fundraising for something connected to your own experiences can make you feel quite vulnerable, but I have felt incredibly proud to be supporting them.
It also reminded me that fundraising doesn’t necessarily have to involve doing something enormous. Sometimes you can take something you already love doing and simply find a way for it to do a little bit of good too.
There were so many!
Watching people buy our plants knowing that every one was contributing towards Beat was incredibly special. Then there was the experience of actually creating our Beautiful Border at the Gardeners’ World Autumn Fair, something Lloyd and I never imagined we would be doing when we first started gardening.
We are enthusiastic hobbyist gardeners, and we deliberately approached the experience with that beginner mindset: learning, experimenting and making something that felt like us. To then receive a Silver Merit Award for our border was completely overwhelming.
But one of my biggest highlights was simply seeing people enjoy it. People stopped, looked, talked to us and understood the joy behind what we had made.
There was something particularly meaningful about standing beside our creation while raising awareness for a charity connected to a much harder part of life.
It felt like a lovely reminder of just how much life can still grow around you.
Please don’t think you have to do something extraordinary to make your fundraising worthwhile.
Start with something you enjoy, or something you already have in your life, and think about how you could turn it into an opportunity to raise a little money or awareness. For us, that happened to be gardening! For somebody else it could be something completely different.
I’d also say that your contribution matters regardless of its size. It can be very easy to compare yourself with huge fundraising challenges or impressive totals, but every person who supports Beat is contributing towards helping somebody affected by an eating disorder.
Most importantly, try to let yourself enjoy what you’re doing. Our contribution gave us memories we will keep forever, introduced us to wonderful people and made an already special experience feel as though it had an even greater purpose.
You really can grow something good from something you love. YOU CAN DO GREAT THINGS!
Donate today to help us provide more vital support to people who are affected by eating disorders.
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