‘Heroes’ rewarded with homegrown dahlias

SEVERAL “Henley heroes” have been presented with bouquets of flowers, in recognition of their community contributions.

Instagram page Delicious Dahlias was set up in August this year and has been handing out homegrown dahlias to volunteers in the community who go “that extra mile”.

Since the account was created people have come forward to nominate deserving recipients.

They included Sue and David Litchfield for their volunteering with Sonning Common Health Centre, Hayley Underwood who is Ladies Club Captain at Caversham Lawn Tennis Club and Lisa Tavinor, a volunteer administrator with Henley Hawks.

In October, two more volunteers were gifted bouquets, including Sheila Maughan, who helped to found Shedquarters in Peppard, and Pippa Trench, one of the founders of the Five Horseshoes Community Group.

The woman behind the page, Francesca Stanton, from Kingwood, grows the flowers in her garden and said she set up the account in order to spread some of the joy the dahlias gave her.

Mrs Maughan has lived in Sonning Common for 58 years and founded the community shed for residents to work on DIY projects to help defeat loneliness in the village.

Mrs Maughan said the idea came to her at a tea party in the village hall where she noticed there was 60 women but only three men.

She said that she was “very surprised” to receive the bouquet that featured three varieties of dahlia — Orfeos, Downham Royal and Black Narcissus.

“I thought it was a lovely gesture,” Mrs Maughan said. “I don’t really expect accolades, I just had an idea and have got on with it.”

Mrs Maughan said she would like to mention Viv Binder and Clive Mills, who helped her raise the funds for the £60,000 project.

Since opening at the beginning of November, the shed now has 43 members who have been working on a number of items which are sold to raise funds for the upkeep of the shed.

Among them, these include handcrafted pens, bird boxes, jewellery hangers and a storage unit for wellies.

Mrs Maughan said she would like to get some long-term projects going and hold more specialist workshops on different crafts.

Earlier this year, the shed held a stained glass workshop with Nicola Kantorowicz.

Ms Maughan said: “It’s still coming along and there are things to do, but the men are beginning to make things. It gives me satisfaction that it’s helping the community and it's bringing the community together.

“The change I have seen from some of the men is incredible. They come out of themselves.”

Another recipient, Ms Trench, from Maidensgrove, said that receiving the flowers from Delicious Dahlias had spurred her on to continue to fight for the Five Horseshoes.

Ms Trench helped to mobilise a group of volunteers that set up a campaign to protect its village pub from being turned into housing.

After the Five Horseshoes closed in August last year, the group registered the pub as a asset of community value to ensure they will have a chance to purchase it if it goes on the market.

The group have been informed that the pub is currently mid-sale but wants to get its doors open as soon as possible.

In the case that the sale falls through and the pub is put on the market, Ms Trench is trying to put together a business and fundraising plan. Of receiving the bouquet Ms Trench said: “It was 100 per cent unexpected. My first reaction was just ‘Oh my goodness, there are so many other people doing amazing things’ but then Francesca stopped me and said that what we have done is very important. Actually, it was really motivating and humbling.

“It’s a fantastic idea, and I thought of other people that could be nominated and added to her list.

“It’s really lovely what she is doing, to just bring out all the positive things.”

Dahlia enthusiast Francesca Stanton, from Kingwood, came up with the idea for the project after suffering an injury, leaving her unable to continue with one of her life’s passions which was tennis.

She learnt more about the flowers during an evening class at the Bosley Patch, off Marlow Road in Henley, and has made a number of bouquets from her crop over the summer. She said: “I used to play lots and lots and lots of tennis, I was a mad-keen tennis player. I had a hip operation and then a long period of recovery, then I had to wear a knee brace for six months and I never got back on court.”

After being unable to return to play at Caversham Lawn Tennis Club, where she was a member for around 15 years, Ms Stanton said she needed something to pick her spirits up.

She said: “It was my love, not playing was very difficult and I just got very low and I just wanted a project.

“I needed something to get my sort of my teeth into and I wanted something creative to do.

“The dahlias really make me happy and I wanted to be able to share a bit of this dahlia joy with people.”

Ms Stanton said that the project was about celebrating unsung heroes in and around the local area.

She said: “It’s just a way of saying thank-you to people in the local community who put hours and hours of their time into projects.”