We had a lovely ‘flower festival’ main meeting in June. Our members were asked to bring along a vase of flowers from their garden, displayed in a jam-jar or similar.
What a wonderful ‘free’ display of flowers we had, many thanks to everybody for their contributions. They were used as table centres during the evening, and formed the competition which was won by our newest member Ann Toll.
Our speaker for the evening was Melanie Farrow who started to develop ‘Smelanie’s Flowers’ during the Covid Lockdown. She entertained us with pictures showing the journey from a barren field to 20 beds of beautiful cottage garden plants, including spring tulips and autumn dahlias. Her love of flowers shone through, and she finished her talk with demonstrating how a bucket of her flowers, some chicken wire and a charity shop ‘vase’ can produce a beautiful display.
Pat and Annette also organised a plant sale, with lots of healthy homegrown flowers. They raised £140 which our Garden Group will use to arrange a visit or a course later in the year. We finished with our usual business, subgroup updates and the raffle. Melanie’s flower display provided the centrepiece of prizes, but they also included a beautiful scabiosa and other flower related items.