Gardeners help with project

On selected Thursday and Saturday mornings, High Woods Preservation Society members form work-parties to undertake tasks such as path clearance and way-marking.

Of late, so many volunteers have been turning out that it has been possible on occasion to divide the group in two – so accomplishing twice as much.

In contrast. the Millennium Garden which the League of Friends of Bexhill Hospital paid to have created for the benefit of Irvine Unit patients in 2000 had become sadly neglected.

When preservation society president and work-party leader Alan Malpass heard about the sad state of the Millennium Garden he put an idea to his colleagues.

They readily agreed and, by arrangement with Bexhill and Hastings Primary Care Trust, an eight-member HPS team began unloading tools in the grounds of Bexhill Hospital one Saturday.

Out came the self-sown sycamore from the shrub bed. Up came the weeds invading the borders. Off came the dead heads of the daffodils planted by Rotarians in the raised bed.

The League of Friends is expecting shortly to receive a request under its bids system from Irvine Unit officers for new shrubs to fill the gaps.