During the covid pandemic when everywhere were short of PPE I asked my husband to print visors on his 3D printer for my friend to take to work, as she worked in Rotherham General Hospital. The visors were approved and lots more people needed the visors. 

We opened a funding page, which with private donations reached over £7000. With the money we purchased a further 8 3D printers, food and toiletry packages that we put together for front line workers. After covid we donated the printers, plastics etc to local schools.

My husband and I took it in turns to swap the printers over every 2 hours, 24 hours a day for weeks on end. We had 2 visors per printer and 9 printers running at once. If any of the printers stopped working my husband would spend hours repairing them. He also built all the printers. Our children chipped in putting the visors and PPE orders together.

With the funding money we purchased a sewing machine and I started sewing face masks. Other local sewers would drop of face masks, hospital scrubs and uniform bags for us to pass on to front line workers with the visors, food and toiletry packages.
If we were short of anything the local community would chip in and drop supplies off at our home for us to use.

We had so many front line workers visit our home. Many would see our garden and ask if we sold plants. We were out of work, in lock down but garden centres could stay open, so we started splitting the plants in our garden to sell.

I started to think, Where do all the tropical plants come from? Why are they so expensive? Why do very few garden centres have only a few tropical plants?

When I have been looking to buy plants for our tropical garden I found it a bit of a task finding some plants. I thought, I will bring everything to our home and make it a unique place to by most of the tropical plants most keen tropical gardeners search for. We decided its best to stay at home to keep the costs down and that way our customers can view our garden when the visit.

We opened a facebook page, designed this website, bought a van. We even took our van and travelled around Europe to make contacts for plants.

We were featured in the Rotherham advertiser, Yorkshire Live, Sheffield Live, Maltby Lions website, Rotherham United Football Clubs Website and Sheffield Star.  My husband was on ITV News. I was on BBC Radio Sheffield. We received many thank you cards from care homes and front line workers and a letter of thanks from our Local MP.
 

You can find out more about us and the PPE we make on:

ITV NEWS

https://www.itv.com/.../family-running-24-hour-ppe.../

BBC RADIO SHEFFIELD

YORKSHIRE LIVE

https://www.google.com/.../couple-start-247-ppe...

RUFC Website

https://www.themillers.co.uk/.../read--locals.../

MALTBY LIONS Website

https://www.maltbylions.org.uk/donate-to-help-make-ppe.../

SHEFFIELD LIVE

https://web.sheffieldlive.org/home-factory-delivers-3d.../

Link to all our info, pics & videos on our funding page. 

https://www.facebook.com/donate/643473449807122/679474849540315/