#BuxtonFlowerpotTrail

Buxton Flowerpot Trail

Mission

The Buxton Flowerpot Trail encourages local households, groups and businesses to spend a bit of time being creative and to re-use/re-purpose their waste resources, specifically, their old plant pots to make characterful creations and then display them for those walking by to see.

It simply aims to bring a smile.

Our Role

We promote the trail in the spring, encouraging people to participate, and then run making workshops and pick-up-pots-stalls at community days such as the Buxton Spring Fair and Rotary Club‘s Summer Fair & Charity Bazaar, and at community venues, The Green Man Gallery and the Serpentine Community Garden. We also run making workshops with private groups as requested.

We then create a location map (printed and electronic) of the displayed flowerpot creations, making a trail, and promote it for locals and visitors to hunt them all down.

“Head to where to see the dots, can you find the flowerpots?“

We choose a theme each year to help inspire the participants:

2019 – Music
2020 – Pandemic Activities
2021 – Go Wild!
2022 – Jubilee
2023 – Gilbert & Sullivan
2024 – Olympics & Paralympics – view the map here

Click the images at the bottom of the page for information and to see pictures from each year.

Get Involved

If you would like to get involved with the project, to help us promote it or to help with the workshops, please email hello@funnywonders.org.uk.

Engage with the project on social media using the hashtag #BuxtonFlowerpotTrail.

Or join the trail!

If you don’t have anywhere suitable to display a creation (such as a gatepost, doorstep, garden or window), we can arrange an alterative location for you.

How to Make a Flowerpot Person

Flowerpot people are very simple to make – they are just knots in string.

See our instructions and videos below to make a basic flowerpot person.

But there really is no right way to make one – you’re free to experiment and make them however you can.

Part I – looking for resources

Part II – what you need

Part III – construction

History

It is safe to say that Buxton has a thing with flowerpot people! It all started when the Buxton Town Team rejuvenated the town’s Buxton in Bloom competition and entry into the Royal Horticultural Society’s East Midlands in Bloom Competition in 2014. The following year, they added a new category: ‘Best Flowerpot Person’.

As making flowerpot people is a little bit silly, a little bit fun and involves the re-use of materials, something for which we advocate, Funny Wonders obviously got involved. We helped the Town Team run community making workshops and promote the Bloom category and, in 2019, we officially took over the project, reviving the Buxton Flowerpot Trail, which was tested in 2017.

Up to 2019, the flowerpot creations were displayed around the town, in shop windows, on doorsteps and in gardens, in July for our summer festivals. It took a slight detour in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with it running from April to August to help brighten up the day of those still out and about – key workers, community volunteers and households out on their daily exercise opportunity. We extended it to July and August in 2021 but changed it to June and July in 2022 to link in with the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Normal service was resumed in 2023.

Thanks

Over the years, we have received funding to run the project from Derbyshire County Council, via their Action Grant and Community Fund schemes, High Peak Borough Council via their Councillor’s Initiative Fund and Mayoral Charity, and Tarmac. We give particular thanks to local councillors, Linda Grooby, Jean Todd and Matt Stone, for their continued help and support.

We also thank our map-sellers, The Green Man Gallery, Buxton Crescent Heritage Trust and Buxton Visitor Centre at The Pump Room and Buxton Civic Association at Poole’s Cavern Visitor Centre.