Volunteering - flowers, brasses, gardening

Flowers - Contact Gina

The Flower Ladies of St. Michael's as ever made sure our beautiful church looked joyous every Sunday, many managed to do so from their own gardens. 

There were numerous weddings, for some of which the Rota Ladies provided the arrangements.  Our festivals, Easter and Christmas were a triumph, and were greatly appreciated. We are extremely lucky with our team of ladies all of whom are talented in the art of flower arranging.

From January 2010 we have a new lady to act as secretary and organiser for the flowers. Gina who is the manageress to the flower shop of the local garden centre, is enthusiastic and has tremendous connections for flowers and floral tributes, we are grateful to her for taking on this role; she has a busy year ahead, with no less than sixteen weddings booked to date.  The flower ladies will continue to do their flowers for Sundays and festivals, under her guidance.

Pictures below show the 2008 Flower Festival at St Michael’s Betchworth (Click image for a large view):

Cleaning - Contact Carol Clark This year we welcomed 4 new ladies on the Rota (Mrs Scotcher, Mrs Green, Mrs Davy and Mrs Stow) and we lost one lady who moved away. We now have 16 ladies who give their very valuable time once a month and it makes it a lot easier having enough ladies when we have a 5 week month.

We would of course love to have more volunteers and then all parts of the church could be cleaned every week. At present the Chancel is cleaned every week and the Nave and Aisles every other week. We do our best with what resources we have, provided people turn up when they should.

The Rota continues to be planned every six months and then forwarded by email on to the Parish Magazine for including on a monthly basis. This is the way we advise those on the Rota when they are required to clean the church and this system seems to work quite well. Any changes or amendments are notified to the Magazine on a monthly basis and before the magazine deadline again by email or sometimes by telephone.