As Christmas approaches the All Aboarders would like to extend the warmest of festive wishes to all our supporters. The team achieved so much in 2022 so we would like to toast to all involved especially our volunteers, station and facilities staff, and sponsors – cheers!

We once more decorated a tree for the St Francis Christmas Tree Festival. With our twin themes of rail travel and sustainability the team crafted decorations from travel postcards, old train tickets and items from the garden. The beautiful tree topper is a dried allium seed head carefully preserved by a volunteer. The living tree was wheelbarrowed back to the station after the festival and now brightens up the waiting room for passengers.

The station recently benefited from another installation for our heritage gallery in the platform 3 waiting room. We were delighted to be loaned an original illuminated station sign by Malcolm Cowan, who rescued it when it was decommissioned. The sign is on display above the vintage travel posters. You can see a photo of the sign when it was in use at the bottom of this page.

The All Aboarders were invited to join the local WGC Rotary Club quiz night to raise money for local, national and international charities. The Rotary Club has been a close friend and sponsor of ours, so of course we took the opportunity to reciprocate. We joined 12 other teams in a 10 round quiz, punctuated by an impressive ploughman’s supper, a raffle, games and lots of camaraderie.

As we were having so much fun it seemed like an unexpected twist for us to come out on top of the leader board (especially as there was only 1 plant question). So a big WELL DONE to the team for winning, and bringing home the wine!

We were very pleased to be approached by one of our partners Garden on a Roll with the offer of plants to help fill some of our larger beds.

The beds on platforms 3/4 were enhanced with edging a year ago by rail contractors, and then filled with compost by volunteers in spring. They feature some of the old (original?) roses, the wonderful pine trees, witch hazel and some other mature shrubs. But there was still plenty of space for more!

Antony Henn, local nurseryman and owner of Garden on a Roll came to a volunteer session with a van full of plants. He used his expert knowledge to arrange the plants around the various beds, explaining which would prefer each position and any specific plant care. We know we can trust Antony as the beds on the opposite platforms that he planted up a number of years ago look fabulous.

The volunteers worked to dig, plant and water in all the plants. We weren’t sure how many we received to start with so counted the pots after everything was in. The grand total was 103 plants! We are very grateful for the generous and continued support from a local company.

The All Aboarders are back at the station after a winter break. We have got stuck in with a couple of exciting projects, as well as enjoying the beautiful bulbs that are coming up all around the station.

John Ystumllyn Rose

The group entered a competition to receive plants from Harkness Roses in celebration of the first rose named after a black gardener – 18th century Welshman John Ystumllyn. We were successful in our application and received 24 mixed colour roses, plus one of the new John Ystumllyn yellow varieties. Roses are a very traditional part of public planting in WGC so we are thrilled to continue this at the station. Work has begun to clear space to showcase these, with the first batch going into the raised bed on Platform 1/2 South. We plant these roses in celebration of the brilliant diversity of gardeners and volunteers.

New Beds & Compost

Last year GTR edged the beds on platform 3/4 using wooden sleepers which were then treated for longevity. These beds roughly follow the original layout of the station and will help us to establish more plants in these area. GTR also cut the huge hedges here back to more manageable sizes, which really showcases the lovely scots pines. We are now filling these beds with lovely local organic compost and soil conditioner from Equigrow ready for some new plants! As you can imagine the logistics for all of this on a working train station can be challenging, so many thanks to all involved in this operation.