A garden centre popular with Maldon folk has raised a whopping £10,000-plus for charity in this bleakest of years.

Perrywood Garden Centre in Tiptree has raised the cash for its charities of the year. This year, they are Colchester & Ipswich Hospitals Charity, Kids Inspire and Greenfingers Charity. The funds were raised throughout the year across a range of activities involving customers and staff.

This week, in a bid to end the year with some festive cheer, Perrywood launched its annual Christmas cheer campaign. The garden centre, which is dedicated to supporting the local community, teamed up with Tiptree Volunteers to deliver planters to individuals who, for one reason or another, deserve some Christmas cheer.

The Tiptree Volunteers are a group of seven people (Clare Howlett, Sarah Luisis, Carole Hull, Annette Hazell, Alice Dunn, Jamie Cross and Chris Ward). Over the last few months, they have completed just under 1,500 various tasks for people shielding in the local area as well as helping with local foodbank collections.

One of the Christmas cheer deliveries was to Betty who lives in Tiptree. At 87 it was important for Betty to shield, but in addition she suffers with angina and is on daily medication. Betty has not left her house since the initial lockdown in March apart from popping into the garden to feed the wildlife. She was delighted to receive the planted container. Betty enjoys the services of Tiptree Volunteers who do a twice weekly shop and little errands for her.

Another delivery was made to Frances. It would have been Frances' 72nd wedding anniversary next week so the timing for these flowers was perfect. Frances and her husband made it to 71 years together before he died. She was his carer for the last seven years of his life as he had Alzheimer's.

Clare Howlett of Tiptree Volunteers said: "We felt very privileged to be chosen by Perrywood Garden Centre to be a part of their Christmas Cheer campaign and all of us enjoyed delivering the plants to all of the nominated lovelies. It was so very rewarding."

Communications Manager at Perrywood Garden Centre, Debbie Wrigley, added: "It's been an extremely challenging year for fundraising and we are delighted to end the year on a high with our Christmas cheer campaign. We recognise that for some people Christmas can be a difficult time, especially this year. We are so pleased this has bought joy and happiness to the recipients and thank Tiptree Volunteers for making this possible."