"All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt." Charles M. Schulz

Huge thanks to Jo and Rob at The Chocolate Shop for partnering with The Red Tree and ME to help raise awareness of the ME/CFS research led by Professor Chris Ponting at The University of Edinburgh and our One Red Leaf at a Time international art exhibition. We’re incredibly grateful for your support and for using your delicious chocolates to shine a light on our fundraising for this research. Small businesses like yours make a massive difference!

Finding any excuse for a celebration used to come easily. Our children have precious memories of family get-togethers for special events, smaller celebrations or ‘just because’ treats. Like many in a similar position, special events have become less frequent and are obviously now marked in a much smaller, quieter way since our daughter became sick, tube-fed and bedridden due to very severe ME.

A favourite special treat place for our children growing up was the lovely chocolate shop in the village. Hot chocolates and bags of chocolate natterjack toads or chocolate honeycomb were their usual go-tos, but they would still spent ages choosing!

The owners of The Chocolate Shop, Rob and Jo, always made them feel so welcome as our children enjoyed deliberating at great length over which individual chocolates to include in specially chosen boxes for family birthdays and gifts.

So, I naturally asked Rob and Jo if they might be interested in creating a limited-edition red leaf chocolate for the One Red Leaf at a Time exhibition. A small business with a big heart, they very kindly offered to help raise awareness of ME and the research at The University of Edinburgh. They are kindly selling limited edition ‘One Red Leaf at a Time’ bags of red leaves bearing The Red Tree and ME logo and a QR code for information about the research at The University of Edinburgh led by Professor Chris Ponting. Jo and Rob are also very generously donating all proceeds from the sale of these red leaf chocolates to Professor Ponting’s research.

If you would like to celebrate someone who has been a source of red leaves in your life (or even just to treat yourself!), bags of 14 milk chocolate leaves, each including a single red chocolate leaf, are now available for a short time only for £4.80 (approx 70g).

For those not local to Southport, postage for any size parcel up to 2kg in the UK is £5.25. For those who celebrate Easter with chocolate (and for those who don’t but who just love chocolate!), please check out their other amazing chocolate creations too. Orders via email please.