**A NOTE FROM OUR DIRECTORS RE. DELIVERY SERVICE**

Dear our lovely customers. It is wonderful to hear so many people eager to get supplies for their garden, we are inundated daily with hundreds of requests and pleas for deliveries and collections, whilst we wish with all our heart that this is something we can provide, at present as it stands garden products are NOT essential and there is currently a huge risk to public and staff health and until we understand where the land lies with regards to Covid 19 and it’s increasing numbers we will NOT be offering a delivery service currently.

We feel strongly we have a duty of care above and beyond the purchasing of garden products to ensure our community stays safe. Now we are front runners in believing that gardening will be paramount to you at home during this crisis for your mental and physical well being, so to reassure you behind the scenes we are extremely busy in the process of developing procedures that we have never set up before, IF and WHEN we feel it is safe to do so with regards to public health we will be launching a robust and well planned online shop, that is both manageable and viable for us to facilitate and support demand of our thousands of local customers for your gardening needs, this takes time to plan to ensure we get it right and manageable.

At present 95% of our staff are furloughed (including our delivery drivers), they are at home safe, this is essential! The other 5% (some of our management team) are keeping our plants healthy and our accounts and online channels ticking over, whilst ensuring they adhere to strict social distancing measures.

You may have seen on the news the concern over plant nurseries and suppliers with the devastating potential loss of stock, now for us, we had a great few days before closure where the majority of our flowering stock and veg stock was purchased, making gardens bright and beautiful in the run up to our closure, so we only had a few trolleys left with the rest of the orders being put on hold, nothing has been wasted, all of this stock has been donated to local key worker schools, NHS and care homes locally as well as our perishable food, Andy our chef at Wenvoe has been cooking up a storm for a number of front line workers making his famous sausage rolls for all to enjoy as well as perishable food from our food hall being free of charge to staff and donated to the community. At our home grown nurseries we have a huge amount of summer bedding growing in our nurseries and we will keep this watered and safe in the hope that when it is ready will be able to offer it to you along with other garden products.

So what we are currently saying is, stay at home and save lives, stay safe, we will be there to welcome you all at the end of this and providing you with advice and tips via social media to get your garden ready for seasonal planting and IF and WHEN we feel it is safe to do so we will open our delivery service, click and collect and online shop, this will be ready to go in the very near future! Rest assured we will communicate this service as and when it is ready and above all IF we decide it is 100% safe to do so for all concerned.

On behalf of Graham and Ian Pugh, Directors and all of the Senior Management team at Pugh's Garden Village