PLANTING has finished in this year’s Rotary International polio awareness campaign, with 4,000 purple crocus bulbs now in the ground ready to make a spectacular display in spring.
The Rotary Club of Tunbridge Wells distributed about half of the bulbs to schools and organisations around town and completed the job at Dunorlan Park earlier this month (November 14).
“Normally, we try to do the planting for November 24, World Polio Day,” said Ian King, chairman of the projects committee for the Rotary Club of Tunbridge Wells.
“Because it’s difficult to get enough people together, we did it a bit earlier,” he said. Mr King also thanked the Friends of Dunorlan Park and other volunteers who helped plant approximately 2,000 bulbs near the Pembury Road car park.
The new crocuses were placed on the edge of the area planted in earlier years, in the hope of creating a spectacular purple display that gets bigger every year.
“The purple crocus is a symbol of Rotary’s worldwide campaign to eradicate polio, with its colour representing the purple dye used to mark the finger of a child who has been vaccinated,” Mr King explained.
“The crocuses will hopefully produce a spectacular display early next year to remind people of the importance of eliminating this devastating disease from the world.”
Rotary International helps to plant millions of purple crocuses every year, to raise awareness of its efforts worldwide as a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
This year, St Barnabas C of E Primary School, Southborough Primary School, Oakley School, Grosvenor and Hilbert Park and the 2nd Southborough Brownies also received crocus bulbs from the Rotary Club of Tunbridge Wells.
