PURPLE power will descend on Ashburton next month as the town marks Rotarians’ exhaustive bid to eradicate polio worldwide.

Tomorrow (October 21) at 10am is being marked in the diary as the day when VIPs gather locally to mark Ashburton’s contribution to the Purple4Polio campaign to decorate crocuses in towns and villages across the UK.

Town councillors heard that ceremonial plantings will take place in three proposed venues, including Cleder Place and the back of the Town Hall.

Altogether 5,000 crocus corms will give added colour to Ashburton and Buckfastleigh with 10 million others blitzing the rest of Britain.

The purple crocus is a symbol of Rotary’s global initiative to consign polio to medical history books.

The colour represents the dye used to mark the finger of a child, indicating they have received their lifesaving oral polio vaccine.