Few, if any, Meals-on-Wheels recipients had the opportunity to attend the Winston-Salem Open last week.    However, thanks to Robbin Flow and the volunteers from Gifts from Gran’s Garden (GFGG), quite a few will experience a little piece of this awesome event today.  Annually, Flow Automotive hosts a corporate event on the Saturday night after the finals of the Winston-Salem Open, with customers, community partners, and lots of flower arrangements.

A regular member of the GFGG core group of volunteers, Robbin brought those leftover flowers to Senior Services. “I just can’t let flowers go to waste,” she said.  By Monday afternoon, the Meals-on-Wheels pick-up room was filled with the scent of dozens of floral bouquets.  She and her Gifts from Gran’s Garden comrades spent the afternoon repurposing the floral settings.  The women from GFGG work with ease and attention to detail, transforming the large floral arrangements into scores of beautiful and aromatic nosegays.

Robbin has been bringing the leftover flowers to Gifts from Gran’s Garden on the Monday after the event for several years. “The Winston-Salem Open intends to be a community-wide event that is a way of giving back to our city,” she said.  “The event gets a lot of publicity and creates a lot of goodwill for our city, so this is just another arm of that.  It’s a way of using one of the resources we had—these beautiful flowers—to pass them on, pay it forward.”

Senior Services is grateful on behalf of the seniors we serve to the ladies of Gifts from Gran’s Garden, Flow Automotive, the Winston-Salem Open and the volunteers who will deliver the flowers to many seniors around Forsyth County who receive Meals-on-Wheels and Home Care services.  Among the array of colorful blooms are the uniquely sphere-shaped, bright yellow flowers called Billy Buttons; their likeness to tiny tennis balls is probably not a coincidence.