It was a great pleasure to welcome over 300 visitors to the 13 gardens taking part – a wonderful result, many thanks to all our garden owners and helpers. We had mixed weather on the Saturday, then Sunday was mostly warm and sunny apart from the hailstorm finale! Several people said it was the best village Open Gardens they had been to this year with the variety of sizes, styles and settings, wonderful views, excellent refreshments and a warm welcome everywhere. “An absolute delight” was one of the many great comments. The net proceeds from programme sales will be divided between the Village Hall and the Gardening Club. Hopefully this will now return to being a biennial event in our calendar and if you have any photos, please do share them!

Just two days after that busy weekend was our monthly meeting on July 11th, a very informative and amusing evening with Phillipa Cooper, an enthusiastic member of the Eckford Sweet Pea Society of Wem and an excellent speaker. First she explained the difference between “Spencers” and “Old Fashioned”, how they are grown and propagated, before moving on to the best way to prepare them for showing, with details of the upcoming Wem show.

She also gave us a spring pea Lathyrus vernus for our raffle that she drew afterwards, then judged our monthly competition which had some great entries. Members and guests chatted to Phillippa over refreshments and took home some of her information leaflets also our usual free gardening magazines.