SPRING - SUMMER NEWSLETTER 2008

INVITATION TO ALL!
Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th April
OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE NEW CLUB BUILDING

We’re celebrating the naming and dedication of our new Club Building at the Albany Road Allotments. Join us on Saturday 5th April when the shop will open at 10am as usual for sales. Then at 1pm Linda Smith will dedicate the building to her late husband, Chris, followed by a BBQ and refreshments (no charge!). The event will close at 3pm. The building will be open again on Sunday between 10am and 2pm, with more free refreshments. Fingers crossed for some fine weather!

In this Issue:
Invitation to Official Opening
Red Lion Street Plant Sale
Inter Club Quiz
Hampton Court and Tickets
HFHS Competition
BWGC Flower Show & Poem
Victorian Garden Party
Letter to Winchester
Opportunities for Volunteering
Congratulations!
Bees

Red Lion Street Plant Sale
A cracking chance to buy good plants at rock-bottom prices! As you know, this year’s plant sale will be held on
Saturday 10th May
If you’ve saved any pots of seedlings, cuttings or herbaceous perennials, etc, label them and contact Keith Fry on 01489 894625 and he will arrange collection. We will be sorting and organising plants on the Friday 9th May. Let’s hope that we can beat last year’s fantastic record and raise much-needed funds for the Club!

11th April 2008
Inter Garden Club Quiz at Catholic Church Hall 7.30pm

This is an occasional contest which this year is between Bishops Waltham Gardening Club, and gardening clubs / horticultural societies from Upham, Denmead and the Meon Valley. It is a very entertaining and competitive evening! If you would like to be a member of the team or teams, please contact Ann Magrath on 891470. Spectators and supporters are very welcome.

Hampton Court Flower Show 2008
The format used in previous years has been replaced by a design for a small plot, 2mx2m, entitled “Inspiring Spaces”. Joan Powell, Ann Magrath and Nicky Simmonds have risen to the new challenge and submitted their plan to the RHS. They heard recently that it has been accepted for display at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show from 8-13 July. Congratulations!

Tickets for Hampton Court
As a result of our entry, we have tickets available for each of the following days at the Hampton Court Flower Show. The Trustees are offering these tickets via a lottery based upon membership number. If you wish to have a chance of having one ticket for the price below, then contact any Trustee to have your name included. The deadline is 31st May 2008. On 1st June 2008 we will draw the winning membership numbers from a hat and offer the ticket of choice to the member. This will be repeated for all the tickets available. You will be classed as exhibitors and have access to areas to which the public don’t have access, e.g. the exhibitors’ meal tent which offers much better value for money!

Are you up for it?
The Hampshire Federation of Horticultural Societies holds a competition for the best garden in Hampshire and a similar one for the best allotment. If you would like more details and possibly an entry form please contact Tim Gover by 1st May at the latest: call 01489 895218 or email him at tim.gover1@btopenworld.com.

The Club’s Annual Show at the Jubilee Hall is on:
Saturday 26th July.
Last summer the judges said how much they enjoy the Bishops Waltham Flower Show because the standard of entries is always so high. But it’s also lots of fun! Set up from 8.30am to 10am. Then closed for judging and open again for viewing from 1.30pm.

Congratulations to our fantastic team of Ann Magrath, Bron Dickenson, Rosemary Lee and Lance Ingram who won the final of the Hampshire Federation of Horticultural Societies’ quiz on Saturday 23rd February! This is a tremendous achievement and they came home with a very well-deserved trophy.

The Annual Flower Show Blues
Up at dawn and down to the field
To look at the crop, assess the yield.
Is there a carrot, a bean or a beet
That wildlife haven’t attempted to eat?
Will the potatoes be covered in scab?
Will the marrow look skinny and sad?
The onions have bolted, the runners have run,
This gardening lark is really such fun!
Ah! Is that a gooseberry under the net?
Yes! One that the blackbirds haven’t seen – yet!
Ann Magrath

Victorian Garden Party on 13th July
To be held in the gardens at Thickets House, Botley Road, by kind permission of Mrs Georgie Busher. Tickets will be available nearer the time but must be purchased beforehand, price £7.50 each.

Trip to Flintshire
There are still lots of places available for the September trip to Mold near Chester, staying at the Beaufort Park Hotel. If interested, please contact Gill Stainer on 01489 893384.

Letter to Winchester
In mid-February Keith Fry wrote to Winchester City Council on behalf of the Club about the impact on the Albany Road Allotments of the Winchester District Development Framework. You can read his letter in full on the website, but in brief he stressed that any proposal leading to the loss of the allotments would seriously damage opportunities available to the people of Bishops Waltham. Ours is a thriving and active Club with a considerable programme of activities, a large membership and sound financial management. As a registered charity what we do is ‘not for profit’ but for the benefit of the whole community.

The allotment site has been in cultivation for over 25 years and allotment holders cover the whole spectrum of ages and occupations, including families. He pointed out that we are also on the point of completing a £20,000+ redevelopment of our allotment building to provide better facilities. This development received a lottery grant of £10,000, a £1000 grant from Hants County Council and the balance of the costs from many years fund-raising by Gardening Club members.  “Tilling of land is a healthy activity,” he said, “and satisfying well beyond the time and effort involved. Far better to preserve this site, together with the adjoining cricket ground, as an area for recreation and a ‘natural lung’ amongst the housing.”

Opportunities for Volunteering
Do you know about the opportunities available through your membership of the Bishops Waltham Gardening Club? We are corporate members of other organisations, so members have access to the RHS gardens and affiliated gardens all over the country. You can also take part in RHS shows such as Hampton Court and Chelsea. This year a team is entering the “Inspiring Spaces” section of the Hampton Court Show, which is being funded by the Gardening Club. The Trustees would like to increase the range of participants, so if this interests you, please get in touch with any Trustee.

We belong to the Hampshire Federation of Horticultural Societies which enables Gardening Club members to enter competitions such as the Allotment Competition and the Garden Competition and to be members of our quiz team, which this year won the competition. If you would like to take part in future quizzes, please get in touch with any Trustee.

We belong to Garden Organic which enables you to visit gardens around the country and to have access to probably the best organic seed collection available. If Gardening Club members would like organic seed, then it will be necessary to coordinate an order to obtain the best discounts. This will require a coordinator. Currently we have no coordinator for organic seeds but if this interests you, please get in touch with any Trustee.

Our membership of The National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens enables members to visit the National Plant Collections around the country and to acquire rare cultivars.

Finally the Gardening Club itself provides opportunities. Members can help at the shop. You can help at the plant sales in Red Lion Street and the Bishops Waltham Carnival by providing plants, cakes or preserves, or by selling on the day. You can help look after the station footpath planting and you can even become a Trustee. Members can also become distributors for the newsletter, seed catalogues, the seed order and any of the other numerous items which need to be got out to other members. If you would like to take part in any of these activities, then please get in touch with any Trustee.
Keith Fry

Bees!
Gill Atkins gave a very interesting talk in January about her bees. She has since heard that a fellow beekeeper is looking for a site to place a few hives. If anyone would like some hives in their garden, orchard or field, without needing to take care of them themselves, please call her on Bishops Waltham  894654 or email gillian_atkins@bishopswaltham.net.

Thank You!
Following the appeal for help in completing the new building at Albany Road, a lot of you donated money or materials and the whole Club is grateful to you. I have tried to write to each donor individually but at one stage the gifts were coming so thick and fast that I may have missed some. For this I apologise so please accept this note as our heartfelt THANK YOU. Tim Gover

Support your Shop!
Don’t forget: you can buy your gardening sundries at your Shop in the Chris Smith building. Don’t be shy about suggesting new lines that the Shop could stock. Let Tim Gover know by calling 01489 895218 or email him at tim.gover1@btopenworld.com.

Carnival 2008
The Gardening Club will have a stall selling plants and any other items we can usefully sell, at  the Carnival field on Saturday 14th June 2008. If you have any items you would like to donate which we can sell, please contact any trustee.

Contact Details & Publicity Reminder
If you have any photos from trips and outings, please do send them to the Club, bwgc@hantsweb.org.uk or call me, Jacky Kippenberger, Publicity Organiser, on BW893473. Include a few details, so that the pictures can accompany any writing by the Publicity Organiser about said trip, whether for the newsletter, the website or the Parish Magazine.

Bulb Purchase Scheme

The Trustees of Bishops Waltham Gardening Club are always trying to develop new ways of providing services to members which give value for money and also provide a small margin to set against the costs we incur. To this end we are going to try a BULB PURCHASE SCHEME this year.
This means that we will buy a range of varieties of spring flowering bulbs at wholesale prices. We will then offer them for sale to members at a price substantially below what you would have to pay at a garden centre or nursery for the same product.
For this scheme to be a success, we need the support of members in buying sufficient numbers of bulbs for the order to the supplier to be viable. In this newsletter you will see a list of the varieties we propose to sell, together with information about each variety. In the event that insufficient bulbs are ordered, then we may have to cancel the availability of some of the varieties.
If you wish to order, please complete the order form (download here) and send or give your order to Keith Fry, Gable Cottage, Coppice Hill Bishops Waltham SO32 1AG, telephone 01489894625 or email to BWGC