A group of Horsham gardening friends have received a letter of thanks from a cancer research institute for their voluntary efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The group had been growing, bunching and selling flowers for charity for about five years – with this year’s efforts going towards Ballarat’s Fiona Elsey Cancer Research Institute. 

The keen gardening contingent donated $1400 after their yearly Mother’s Day fundraiser to an institute that was founded following 14-year-old Fiona Elsey’s death due to cancer in 1991. 

Institute director Dr George Kannourakis passed on his thanks in a letter to the gardeners for their efforts in selling more than 250 bunches of flowers.

Horsham’s Yvonne Dunn said despite Mother’s Day falling in the middle of a stage-three statewide lockdown in May, the group continued its efforts online. 

“We started off donating these chrysanthemums and we bunched them up and sold them,” she said. 

“In previous years we have made about $2000-$2400. We used to sell them in Horsham Plaza, but this year because of COVID-19, one of the ladies put them on Facebook and we sold them online.”

Mrs Dunn said the group’s donation would help fund vital research for one of the leading causes of death in Australia, with cancer claiming almost 50,000 lives in 2019.

“My dad had asbestos cancer and he didn’t live long with cancer. He was in his late 70s,” she said. 

“I haven’t personally experienced anything traumatic, but everyone typically knows someone with cancer.

“This is about getting better treatments. Research has come a long way, where some people can get a second chance of life through the different treatments they use.”

– Dylan De Jong 

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