Llanferres Parish Gardening Club

Whilst we don’t mean to wish away the summer, preparations for our annual show in September are increasingly underway both behind the scenes and hopefully in the garden too.

The schedules are officially out and about and if you haven’t had one delivered, they are available to pick up in and around the parish, at the Druid, Café Florence and in various phone boxes and on noticeboards. They are also available to download from the Gardening Club FaceBook page.

There are lots of different classes available, indeed something for everyone, from the serious flower and veg grower to the more ‘havea-go’ amongst us including, (cue spotlight) the Largest Marrow class! Several of us already have our marrows planted and the rivalry will only intensify as September approaches…

One of our judges, Kathy Flint, came to our May meeting to give us a talk on Floral Art, she gave us sound advice on everything from prepping plant material for use in arrangements (conditioning), to the sizes and shapes of containers available, she also suggested alternative materials to use in place of oasis (not very sustainable!) to hold arrangements in place. Kathy is extremely knowledgeable and was able to put things across in a clear and concise way, (all those years of teaching paid off!), even the more subjective aspects such as form, colour and artistry. She explained what a judge might be looking for in a winning arrangement. All in all it was a very enlightening evening and even some of our more sceptical members sat up and took notice and many of us left thinking that maybe we could have a shot at doing that afterall…

June 25th will see our coach trip to RHS Bridgewater in Salford in lieu of the usual meeting and we will be reporting on that in the following issue of N&V’s. The Community Council have generously donated £150 towards the cost of this trip and we would like to take this opportunity to thank them, we are very grateful for their support. The July meeting will be an outing to visit the Community Garden in Gellifor, Iola Quinn who instigated this project, gave us a thoroughly inspiring talk about the creation of the garden at our November meeting last year and this visit will provide us with an opportunity to see the garden in all its glory and to chat to the volunteers from the community who help maintain it. Hopefully it will inspire some ideas for the development of Maes Ysgawen and how we can be a part of it and help make a difference in our own community.

The date for the visit has yet to be decided so look out for more details coming soon either via your inbox (if you are subscribed to our email list) or via the FB page.

@llanferresparishgardeningclub email: llanferresgardenclub@ gmail.com