York Bloggers Event – The Botanist – #YorkBloggersxTheBotanist

AD – Press Event/Gifted | Life has been busy and you may already know that I founded the York Bloggers network. This resulted in our first event which took place in February, York Bloggers x The Botanist. When I created York Bloggers, I wanted to have a space online and offline, by creating opportunities for us as bloggers/ influencers to network and collaborate. The Botanist York very kindly offered us one of their rooms to host our event in. Our aim with this event was to support local businesses if possible, by including them within the event and in the goodie bags. A lot of hard work went into this event and if I’m honest, I was quite stressed but I did thoroughly enjoy it and I’m working on organising more blogger events for York Bloggers in the very near future.

The table décor you can see was gifted for the event and is by the extremely talented, Fodder and Forage. They are based in New Earswick, York and are a greengrocer as well as a florist. I am so thankful to Rosie for all of her hard work. She did an incredible job with the centre pieces and they were absolutely perfect. It really added to the relaxed atmosphere I imagined for the event. The attention to detail was just amazing and it was like you were sat there surrounded by fairy gardens.

The wonderful people at Yorkshire Wolds Apple Juice kindly gifted four big bottles of their cloudy apple juice, so that our guests could sample their apple juice for themselves. I bought pretty paper cups myself to put the apple juice in and they were handed out to our attendees on arrival, to enjoy as the events welcome drink. I love apple juice, but Yorkshire Wolds Apple Juice in particular is so crisp and fresh. It was the perfect refreshing drink for the York Bloggers x The Botanist event.

As everyone got settled in their seats, we did some quick introductions about how the event was going to work and the order in which we had everything planned. We managed to pack a lot into the afternoon and it’s a shame there just wasn’t enough time for the networking activities.

The first talk of the day was by Bax Botanics, who spoke about their alcohol free spirits and how they don’t contain any nasty chemicals. The production of their alcohol free drinks is carried out with the planet in mind. The Botanist and Bax Botanics worked together and offered each guest a non-alcoholic Bax Botanics cocktail for each of us to try. There was a choice of either Thai Chilli Crush non-alcoholic cocktail (pictured above) or The Botanist non-alcoholic cocktail (pictured below). I tried The Botanist, as I can’t have chilli due to my chilli intolerance.

To try help things run more smoothly, we organised for everyone to pre-order their food at The Botanist. This worked really well, as I’ve been to events where the food part can turn into chaos. Thank you to The Botanist York for their help in ensuring the food part ran as smoothly as possible, it was really appreciated. Now onto what I ate, I’d ordered the Deli Board and had selected Houmous, Long Clawson Stilton cheese, Prosciutto ham and Crispy pork bites. I enjoy the deli boards as you get to have a variety and can tailor it to what you feel like eating. They are also good value for money!

After we’d all finished our food, the next talk was a mini workshop by Steph Heald. Steph is a business coach, based in Yorkshire, who focuses on empowerment. Her talk had the theme of Vision and Goal Setting, which I felt was very relevant to everyone attending. It was very interesting, talking about why we behave the way we do as adults, which is shaped by our life experiences from childhood. Afterwards, she did a small meditation which was super relaxing and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The final talk was Steph’s other project with her business partner Rachael, which is called The Little Berry Box. The idea of The Little Berry Box was inspired when Rachael’s daughter started her period very early, so they’ve created a hamper full of treats to make that experience a little easier. I think this is such a wonderful idea and I also feel very passionate about topics such as period poverty, so these boxes are a brilliant idea! You can see the example of The Little Berry Box which we were shown at the event, below.

Fodder and Forage also kindly gifted each attendee with their own mini bunch of flowers to take home with them. The smell was beautiful and they were all stunning. Kemps, based in Malton, also gifted everyone their own Kemps goodie bag which included a Malton themed tea towel, Visit Malton/Kemps pencils, a Malton postcard and Kemps leaflets.

Now, let’s talk about the main goodie bags! We put so much hard work into these goodie bags. So much time was spent on these and trying to ensure they were the best they could be. In the end, it included (in no particular order), a Bax Botanics drink, The Crystal Buddha stones or crystals, Tame and Wild bottles, York Gin mini bottle, Fizz bath products, a The Drunk Candle Co candle, a Yorkshire Tonics drink, a Deborah Bakes York brownie, Little Green Wood make-up wipes, The Little Yorkshire Candle Co goodies, Costello’s Bakery cakes pack, PQ Soy Wax Candles wax melts, Nails of Distinction York leaflets/voucher, Loft and Daughter leaflets/voucher and a Yorkshire Tea sample box. I’m going to write a separate blog post on the York Bloggers website about the York Bloggers x The Botanist event, with a focus on the contents of the goodie bags.

Of course, there are plenty of things I learned from organising this event and some things I would do differently. Apologies to the guests that we didn’t have time to do any of the networking stuff we had planned, but we crammed so much into the time we had, we just didn’t have time. Thank you so much to all of the local businesses who got involved with either the event itself and/or contributing to the goodie bags. I was amazed by the interest we had and by your generosity. Thank you also to the bloggers and influencers who took time out of their Sunday to attend and for their social media posts, stories and blog posts about the event. The time spent organising the actual event was crazy, especially around working my full time job and I just hope everyone enjoyed themselves.

Details of any future events will be posted on the events page, on the York Bloggers website.