For the first time in my 14 years at St Margaret’s, we had a wet Florence Nightingale Sunday morning - inded I am told for the first time in 25 years.
So, sorry, no cope on display in the outside photographs this year.

The rain redoubled its efforts as soon as we came out of the door and the first picture is of a very blowy ceremony at the graveside.

One of the delights in the past months has been the gift of a rose bed full of Florence Nightingale roses by the Friends of the Florence Nightingale Museum. On their behalf, Mrs Wendy Matthews officially opend the garden by cutting the ribbon.

The “Florence Nightingale” rose was developed by the Late Douglas Gandy of Gandy’s Roses in Leicestershire to commemorate the opening of the Florence Nightingale Museum in 1989.

The Friends presented the roses to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of Florence’s return from Scutari Barracks Hospital and the opening of the “Wellow Nightingale Experience”

The resting place that was chosen by Florence Nightingale’s family was in a verdant greeen English country churchyard.

Here her memorial is decorated with the 2007 parish wreath, with lamps adorned with local rhododendron and swags of Cow Parsley (which you only find in the countryside).