Helmdon Gardening Club

Gardening club in Helmdon is for all ages and gardening ability. We have around 50 members ranging from late twenties to late eighties! We are a very light hearted easy going bunch with a highlight being Pete’s topical tips each month. Monty eat your heart out!

For those of you who are teetering on the brink of joining us, please just do it! Meetings are pretty informal (and full of chatter) and over the course of the year we try to provide something of interest to everyone. As a general rule we have a speaker one month followed by a ‘Club Night’ the following month where members and Helmdonites give us mini talks or demonstrations about their particular gardening ‘thing’.... anything goes including: organic gardening, garden bugs, national trust gardens, plant quizzes etc. I have had requests for more practical sessions this year (such as how to propagate) and I am hoping to squeeze in a bit of wild foraging. It will be a busy year! Now we are in a healthier financial state we can afford better speakers and our 2012 schedule looks very exciting. We also go on local garden visits including a Mystery Garden visit every summer. The Flower and Produce Show is our newest ‘baby’ and has been a great success two years running. This takes place in August. Also we have decided to have a yearly supper lecture where anybody from Helmdon is most welcome and for a small fee you can have a really entertaining night out listening to some of the country’s best lecturers and enjoy a delicious supper afterwards.

Our spring Social Night in The Bell Inn, Helmdon, is always a jolly affair as is our annual Summer Garden Party. (The Christmas party is something else entirely!) So, something for everybody and you certainly don’t have to be a gardener (or even have a garden) to enjoy these meetings and outings.

Membership is £15 per annum with the benefits of discounts at some local garden centres plus entry to our Summer Garden Party. Guests are very welcome and just pay £2 each time they come. We meet in The Reading Room on the third Thursday of each month at 7.30 pm but you might want to check the 2011/2012 programme of events just to make sure we aren’t gallivanting off somewhere else on the night you want to come. Please drop by; you don’t know what you’re missing!

Clare Nash (Chairman)

December 2011