Award-winning Garden Centre raises over £1000 for Skiggle

FOR the second year running, an award-winning garden centre has raised vital funds for Skiggle, a specialist Preston-based disability charity. 

Barton Grange Garden Centre at Brock selected five local charities – including Skiggle – to support as part of their Christmas 2022 Bells initiative. The garden centre pledged £2 from the sale of Christmas bell baubles to good causes across the Lancashire area. And last week Skiggle founder, Christine Singleton was delighted to receive a cheque for £1072 from Barton Grange Managing Director, Guy Topping.

The Christmas bell baubles were featured as part of a specially designed ‘Let The Bells Ring Out For Charity’ in store display with leaflets on the charities to help raise awareness of the vital work each one does across the county. Every bell was individually tagged with the charity’s name and details giving customers the chance to choose the cause closest to their hearts.

Skiggle first partnered with Barton Grange Garden Centre in 2021 with the original design of the bell baubles signifying the charity’s desire to raise awareness of people living with disabilities being heard. Founder Christine Singleton is proud and heartened that Barton Grange was able to expand the initiative to support even more charities over Christmas 2022.

Skiggle – the only charity of its kind in the UK – provides vital help and support to people with disabilities, their families, and carers. The innovative charity operates an emergency SOS system and runs an online Marketplace for people to urgently access specialist disability equipment, care consumables, and other products – regardless of where they live in the UK.

Receiving the donation from Guy Topping, Christine said:

“As a small charity, we are ever grateful for the support received from the amazing people at Barton Grange and of course their generous customers who purchased one of Skiggle’s bells. We know how difficult it is for people just to make ends meet at the moment, so we never take any support for granted.

“Day after day we’re seeing the continuous rise in the number of people accessing Skiggle’s online Marketplace for our completely free-of-charge products. The charity is rehoming hundreds of disability and special needs care items every week to those people who need them most – many of whom are living with, or caring for people with, disabilities. They need our support more than ever and it’s people like Barton Grange through their charity fundraising that help charities like Skiggle continue to exist in these challenging times.”

Guy Topping, MD of the Barton Grange Group, added:

“Barton Grange have long supported local charities as we want to play our part in supporting our community. It’s been a pleasure to make a donation to Skiggle during our ‘Let The Bells Ring Out For Charity’ initiative during Christmas 2022.”

As well as Skiggle, the other charities benefitting from donations were Baby Beat, Lancashire Mind, Rosemere Cancer Foundation, and Lancashire Wildlife Trust with a combined total of £8502 raised.