Earlier this afternoon, Rotarians Ian Butcher, Roy Stroomer and Richard Jefferies (the 3 musketeers) armed with forks, dibber and wellington boots, planted 200 Crocuses at the Knights roundabout.
For the benefit of the readers a little background as to why the roundabout at the junction of St Albans Road, Dancers Lane and Trotters Bottom is known in the Club as Knights Roundabout. It was following our last visit to our contact Club Hengelosome 15 years ago, in fact the day after they returned by car from Hengelo, that our dear friend and longtime Rotarian, with his wife Betty, was killed at the notorious accident blackspot on St Albans road in a car accident. They had been visiting the Garden Centre at Potters Bar, having driven across Holland the previous day.
The junction, 3 dog-leg for people driving from Trotters Bottom across to Dancers lane, was the scene of numerous accidents.
Following Jim and Betty’s accident the Club mounted a campaign with the Highways Dept and Hertsmere Council for the building of a roundabout, and after a year of lobbying and cajoling, they agreed to the construction of a roundabout.
A Rotary Board in memory of Jim and Betty is affixed to the plot, which was formally “opened” by Tony de St Dalmas of the Southgate Rotary Club who was at the time President of RIBI. We negotiated with Hertsmere Council for them to spend particular attention to the up keep of this area, for which we pay a sum of £140 per annum and have done for the last 13 years.
Additional significance is that the crocuses we planted today will join those planted in the early days of the Polio Crocus campaign by our dear friend Don Merritt, who was the prime mover in launching this campaign.
Rotarian Richard Jefferies