Hi
It was so lovely to see lots of people at the various events as part of Spring Fest. Timothy Walker was very engaging and interesting about the way that plants help us, and how we can help them. And then the Spring Show was busy and colourful in the way it always used to be before the pandemic! Thanks to all who came along, who entered exhibits, ate cake or helped in any way. We can't put on these events without a lot of community support, and it was greatly appreciated. We will be making a substantial donation to One Can from the proceeds, it's great to know that this excellent charity will be benefitting from everyone's generosity. And now it's time to plan for the next big Seer Green Gardeners event, the ever popular Plant Sale. This year it will be on Saturday May 14th between 2 and 4pm. We are going to run it in the same way as last year, with plants available from an experienced plantsman who produces excellent quality bedding and other greenery. We will also have someone selling clematis. On top of these, we are going to have the bring and take aspect to the sale again. If you have any extra seedlings, vegetable plants or any other sort of plant that you think will be appreciated by others, please bring them along at 1.30 on May 14th to the Baptist Church car park. If you are just coming to buy, then please don't arrive before 2pm, to allow us to set up ready for you. The bring and take part of the sale can take cashless payments as well as cash, but the 'new' plants need to be paid for by cash or cheque only please, so make sure that you come equipped! We started a new idea at the beginning of this month, of having a regular meet up in the Three Horseshoes pub at 8pm on the first Tuesday of the month. This is for anyone who would like to meet up with other gardeners for a chat about growing or just to meet new people. We will be holding the next one on Tuesday 3rd May at 8pm, let us know if you'd like to come along. All are welcome. Looking forward to seeing you at one of our events soon. Best wishes Jane Smith - Chair of Seer Green Gardeners
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What a beautiful day it's been today, doesn't it lift the spirits to feel the sun!
It's now less than a week till the SpringFest events. On Friday is the Timothy Walker talk 'What have plants ever done for us'. The ticket price includes a glass of wine or soft drink, and it promises to be a very interesting and absorbing evening. Many thanks to Jordans Environment Trust for supporting this event. We hope you've bought your tickets already, but if not the link is below: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gardening-talk-with-timothy-walker-as-part-of-springfest-tickets-256824267297 And then on Saturday we are finally holding a Spring Show in real life. We've not had one for 3 years, and we are all looking forward to welcoming you to the Baptist Church to either enter some flowers, baking or craft, or to come and enjoy the displays with a cup of tea and a piece of cake! I'm delighted that the school has provided us with art created by all the year groups, so there will be an art display to admire as well as the flowers. The building will be open for entries at 10am until 11, and the show itself starts at 2.30. Please can I encourage you to take part and enter some flowers or one of the other categories? The easiest thing for us is if you enter online - it's a very easy form. You'll find it here, or below: https://forms.gle/syTcdUnii8mULyQ16 Many people have asked us about the Spud in a Bucket competition. Fear not, we are holding it again this year, and you can pick up your spuds at the Spring Show on Saturday. The entry form for this is here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScsRmqw9s9GurB5vXklEupNEbE_BxOWnQ2mJm-95p9QPxpNjQ/viewform And finally, we will also be holding more of our very popular bird watching walks next month. I'll be in touch with more details after the show. You can find out more about everything on our website: www.seergreengardeners.org Looking forward to seeing you next weekend! Jane Happy New Year!
I'm hoping that you have managed to celebrate the holiday, and that even if Omicron got in the way that you were able to enjoy Christmas somehow. Whilst out walking over the last few days in this unseasonably warm weather, I've been noticing the bulbs already straining at the leash, even while the rest of the garden still seems deep in its winter hibernation. Hopefully the beginning of Spring is not far away. The Gardeners' committee were busy in the lead up to Christmas considering the events and activities that we might be offering over the next year. We would love it if you could support us by taking a few minutes to fill in a survey for us. The link to the survey is here. And if that hyperlink doesn't work for you - the google form address is below for you to copy and paste! https://forms.gle/M8EjwDMVQ4Y3HLnw7 Thank you so much for taking the time, it's really appreciated. Wishing you a peaceful and happy 2022. Jane The wildflowers are dying off, the leaves are falling, and the weather is distinctly gloomy. As autumn gathers pace, our minds reflect back on the year we've had, and we look forward to sunnier times to come. The AGM this Thursday at 7.30 is the last event of the Gardeners' year, and all members of the Society (which is anyone who lives in Seer Green) are very welcome. We have decided to hold it via Zoom this year, in the same way as last year, which reduces our costs and allows everyone who might like to attend to be there. The zoom link is below, we hope to see you there!
Topic: Gardeners' AGM Time: Nov 25, 2021 07:30 PM London Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84881311641?pwd=Q1JwcmN5UEc3WVRwenpqYTZ2QnRHZz09 Meeting ID: 848 8131 1641 Passcode: 780678 Having resisted all week, we're verging on having to put our heating on, the summer has really gone now. But I love Autumn, with its crispness and the colours in the garden, and I'm really enjoying the cyclamen putting out their optimistic purple in the face of the dropping temperatures. And of course, the calendar ticking over to October means that we are only a fortnight away from AutumnFest! We're delighted with how well the tickets are going, one of the foraging events is sold out already, and the second has only a few places left. There are still some tickets for the other events, but as they are strictly limited in numbers then please don't wait till the last minute to book, we don't want you to be disappointed. The latest Fest news is that both the pubs are getting involved, with the Cricketers offering a special autumnal cocktail for the duration of the festival, and the Horseshoes offering take away afternoon teas. All the details are on the website - www.seergreengardeners.org
You may remember that in the Spring we offered the children of the village a free Busy Lizzie plug plant. Some of these have been nurtured with loving care, and have produced fantastic blooms. Thanks to the families who who sent us in the proof of their youngsters' green fingers. Below are photos of Mary, Lewis, Isla, Olivia and Emily with their beautiful plants. Well done to all of you, there will be a little something heading your way as a congratulation from all of the Gardeners' committee. And finally, please bear in mind the community Bring and Buy sale in aid of One Can on Sunday 17th October. We'll be looking for donations of all sorts - home made jam, cakes, chutney, maybe home grown vegetables, perhaps craft work? Now the weather's changing, maybe you could spend a little time indoors making something to bring along! We hope that we can get together a brilliant collection which can be sold off to raise money for those in our community who need to use the food bank. Many thanks for your continued support of the Gardeners' work. Jane We've just spent a great afternoon at the Cricketers running the Spud in a Bucket competition. Lots of people had put in lots of effort to grow their spuds, and it was great to be part of this traditional village event in real life again. Thanks to everyone who came along, and congratulations to Jill Moody for the most impressive haul of winning potatoes!
If you live in the village, hopefully you will have seen the Autumn Fest flyer that should have been delivered at some point over the weekend. I hope you're excited about the different events that we have organised. As members of the Gardeners' mailing list, I wanted to give you a reminder the night before the ticket sales open, to give you every chance to book onto the live events, as the ticket numbers are really limited. So if you'd like to secure your place, log on to www.seergreengardeners.org at 9am tomorrow morning! Looking forward to seeing you there. Jane The glorious Bank Holiday weekend that we always hope for turned out to be what we normally receive instead, didn't it? But even though we're in that 'end of the holidays' frame of mind, there are exciting things to look forward to coming from the Gardeners. You will remember that the committee decided to not hold the Autumn show in its normal format this year, because of the uncertainty over Covid. Instead, we are running Autumn Fest between the 15th and 17th October. We are very pleased with the offering we've put together for you, building on the events that were especially well received from Spring Fest, but also adding in something new. Following the huge popularity of the birdwatching walks in the spring, Richard Tomlin has kindly offered to run two more, this time in Little Marlow. Rachel Gibson has also very kindly agreed to run another flower arranging session, this time with an autumn theme. We had to run this via Zoom in the Spring, but this time it will be in real life! One of the very popular speakers at Spring Fest was Timothy Walker. His two talks were extremely well attended, and we are delighted that he has agreed to give another talk which touches on what plants can do for us, but also very importantly (in light of the recent report on global warming), what we can do for plants. This will be by Zoom, and will start with the now traditional cocktail making to get us into the spirit of the festival. But we have brand new offerings for you too! Having spent a morning on a foraging course a year ago, I was very keen that the Gardeners were able to bring this to you as part of Autumn Fest. I'm delighted to say that Jesper Launder, a resident of Jordans, has agreed to run three foraging walks in Hodgemoor as part of the Festival. And we will be building on the success of the Bring and Take plant sale by widening it to garden and domestic produce of all sorts to raise money for the One Can charity that supports those who need food in our area. We are hoping that you might put aside a spare jar of jam, perhaps some squashes or courgettes that are still going strong, perhaps bake a cake, or create something else lovely, and bring it along to the Baptist Church to form the produce for a village sale. Hopefully there will be some appetising produce on sale that you can then buy and enjoy at home whilst helping those who are not as lucky. You might be thinking that perhaps you won't be able to remember all the detail of this email by the 15th October! But fear not, if you live in the village then you will receive a flyer with all the information you need at some point over the next couple of weeks. Keep it somewhere visible, as a reminder of the activities we've been designing for the village. All of the events apart from the produce sale will need to be booked in advance, with most activities having limited numbers available, and all information will be on the website. We will open the bookings once the flyers have been delivered. And as you will remember from my previous posts, the Spud in a Bucket competition is now on Sunday 12th September at 5pm in the Jolly Cricketers. If you entered, you should have had an email about this already. We look forward to seeing you there to see if your entry is award winning, or just small fries..... Jane As I write this, the sun is streaming in through the window and I'm enjoying looking at our garden in full July glory. We are also anticipating the reduction of the remaining Covid restrictions on Monday. However, coupled with these we are sadly seeing an escalation in cases, and the news tells us that the government is not ruling out a new lockdown in some form at the beginning of the autumn. The uncertainty is far from over. Therefore the committee has decided that we will not be holding our Autumn show in September this year. We don't want to set it all up and get people involved, just to cancel nearer the time. Hopefully September 2022 will see a full return to normal. We have also decided to have a year off running the Scarecrow competition. In the last couple of years it's been increasingly difficult to get people to sign up, so we think that maybe it would be a good idea to give ourselves a break from it, and maybe return to it next year.
Not running these stalwart events from the Gardeners' calendar is not a decision we took easily. But instead we have decided to use the change as an opportunity to create other ways to celebrate our community, gardening and the natural world. So we are planning to run an Autumn Fest on the weekend of the 15th to 17th October instead. This will be along the same lines as Spring Fest, which was such a success. We hope to have a mixture again of live events (hopefully more than we were able to manage for Spring Fest) with some online activities as well. Further information will follow in September, please put the dates in your diaries now. And of course the Spud in a Bucket weigh in will still be going ahead on the 12th September, I hope that your spuds have been getting the attention they need to be the winners! If mine are anything like the potatoes we planted out in the garden this year then I'm not optimistic.....We hope also that the children who have been growing Busy Lizzies have been getting pleasure from seeing their plants thrive under their care. You might have noticed that the wildflower beds at the three entrances to the village are really coming into their own now, with the beds at the station catching up fast. Although we used exactly the same seed mix for each, they are exhibiting in very different ways, demonstrating the differences in soil and light at the three locations. I am so delighted that the hard work that the committee did in preparing and planting the beds is coming to fruition so successfully. There are still many weeks of flowering left in them, we hope, to continue to raise the spirits. Have a great summer. Jane Hi everyone
Thanks to the generosity of those who came along with plants to share, the Bring and Take aspect of the plant sale raised £300 for the Thames Valley Air Ambulance. And the very successful bird watching walks from Spring Fest were reprised very kindly by Richard Tomlin, and the donations in gratitude for these wonderful experiences have raised £75 for the local Wildlife Trust. This brings to almost £800 raised for charity by the Gardeners this year alone, we're delighted! The next month or two are habitually quieter ones in the Gardeners' calendar, whilst we enjoy the (hopefully) sunnier weather in our own gardens. But rest assured that we have plans for the autumn, and will let you know what they are closer to the time. I've been sent a request by Holy Trinity Church to see if there is anyone amongst the Gardeners' email list who would like to get involved with a project to look at the diversity of species in the churchyard. Their message is below: This year, June 5 to 13 is the national ‘Churches Count on Nature’ wildlife survey. You are invited to come and visit Holy Trinity churchyard any time that week, bring your camera, field guide or phone app, and see how many plants and creatures you can spot and identify. You can then email your findings to [email protected] We’ll then collate all your discoveries and upload them to the national Caring for God’s Acre survey site, and all data will later be freely available via the National Biodiversity Network Atlas. The NBN Atlas doesn't have any entries for Holy Trinity yet, and we want to change that, with your help. More information can be found on Holy Trinity’s homepage - Holy Trinity Seer Green & Jordans (seergreenandjordanscofe.org) More Information on the Churches Count on Nature churches-count-on-nature-week.pdf (d3hgrlq6yacptf.cloudfront.net) Plants and Wildlife in the Seer Green churchyard Microsoft Word - Plants & wildlife in Seer Green churchyard (d3hgrlq6yacptf.cloudfront.net) Wishing you happy times outside, whether in your gardens or in the countryside this summer. Jane Hi everyone
After weeks of planning, we are delighted to let you know that SG SpringFest is now live, ready for you to sign up to one, some, or maybe even all of the events that we have on offer. We have tried very hard as a committee to provide something for everyone. On Zoom there are talks and demonstrations on all sorts of topics provided by local experts, from sushi to vegetable growing, bees to cocktails, together with flower arranging and a three course meal! We also have two fascinating talks from Timothy Walker, who used to run the Botanic Gardens in Oxford. We have live evening bird spotting walks, and two magical dawn chorus adventures. We have an experienced market gardener bringing young plants for summer colour for sale, and of course the Front Gardens Trail, at which we hope that you will enjoy walking round our wonderful village and chatting to your neighbours. And then you can finish the weekend off with a delicious afternoon tea. And there's activities for the youngsters too - they might well be interested in many of the Zoom talks, and if they want to get outside we will be providing a treasure hunt, for which the prizes are seeds that they can use to develop their own love of gardening. And there are free plug plants for them to nurture too. All the details and most of the events are now live to book on the website (www.seergreengardeners.org), and we have worked very hard to ensure that everything is free! Many thanks to Jordans Environment Trust for helping us reach this goal. I really hope that you enjoy the festival, please pass the details on to your friends! Jane |