The COVID-19 pandemic changed absolutely everything – interpersonal relations, the way we work, buy and eat outside. It proved the importance of social contacts, the importance of our families and friends.

At the beginning of it, in spring 2020, a garden shop called “U Jadzi” (At Jadzia’s, Jadzia being a short form of the Polish woman’s name “Jadwiga”) was not coping, and one of their friends published a dramatic post on Facebook, claiming the shop would have to be closed down if people didn’t apply their usual buying habits (see under the hashtag #pomóżJadzi – “Help Jadzia” on Facebook). The response was enormous – a huge queue of Warsaw gardening fans formed outside, you had to wait for about half an hour to be able to buy anything and people came only to buy one or two plants to show solidarity with the owner.

This shows how much solidarity has grown in Warsaw, and that the pandemic, after all, was not so much a medical happening as a stress test for social contacts. And we did well in this test.

“U Jadzi”, now over 100 years old and coping just fine in 2021, has a wide assortment of seasonal flowers, flower pots, garden tools, plant food and medicine and much more. Pop in to buy flowers as a gift for a Warsaw friend and surprise him/her with Jadzia’s story!