HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL.

Just a quick reminder that we are hosting the Social with the History Society this Friday 10th January, 7.30pm at Lowdham Village Hall.  The Horticultural Society will provide the liquid refreshments, but if members could bring something savoury or sweet to contribute to the buffet, it would be appreciated.  We hope to have a fun evening with a few games and quizzes. It is also a chance for people to catch up with each other after the Christmas festivities and at the beginning of 2014.

Hope to see you all there.

At Lowdham C of E Primary School, Main Street, Lowdham, Notts
A day of events run by ‘The Bookcase’ in partnership with Lowdham Horticultural Society celebrating gardens and gardeners through the ages.

10.30 – 11.30am – Gardeners Question Time Chaired by BBC Radio Nottingham’s John Holmes, and with panellists Stuart Dixon, Mike Poyzer of the Nottingham Organic Gardeners and Geoff Burton from Lowdham Horticultural Society – ask the experts to help solve your gardening problems! Tickets: £5 full, £4 Festival Friends and Lowdham Horticultural Society Members

12 – 1pm – Stuart Dixon – The Garden of Hebbs Farmhouse
Horticultural lecturer, writer and broadcaster Stuart Dixon will share the story of the restoration of his own garden at Hebbs Farmhouse in Stoke Bardolph. The derelict garden contained two ancient Bramley Apple trees and about 1,000 brambles and nettles. It now contains over 1,000 perennials, 150 old roses, and clematis, in a traditional country garden which will be open to the public in summer 2014.  Fully illustrated.
Tickets: £4 full, £3 Festival Friends and Lowdham Horticultural Society Members

2.30 – 4pm Ursula Buchan – A Green and Pleasant Land: How England’s Gardeners Fought The Second World War.  Fired by enthusiastic patriotism, the British people tackled wartime gardening with thrifty ingenuity, invincible humour and extraordinary fortitude. However, as Ursula Buchan reveals, this simple act of turning over soil and tending new plants was also a powerful factor in mitigating the psychological shocks endured by the population. Gardening reminded Britons that their country, and its more innocent pursuits, were worth fighting for. Gardening in wartime Britain was a fight for freedom.. Ursula Buchan studied modern history at Cambridge University, before training as a horticulturist at the RHS Gardens, Wisley and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. She wrote a gardening column for a succession of national newspapers, including the Observer, Sunday Telegraph and Daily Telegraph, as well as The Spectator, for more than twenty-five years. She has published fifteen books and won two major writing awards from the Garden Media Guild. She was recently awarded the Garden Media Guild’s Gardening Columnist of the Year 2011.  Tickets: £6 full, £5 Festival Friends and Lowdham Horticultural Society Members

4.30 – 5.15pm – Poems about Gardens
We close the day over tea and home made cake with readings from the lovely Candlestick Press book Poems about Gardens.
Tickets: £3 full, £2 Festival Friends and Lowdham Horticultural Society Members

Day ticket: £15 full, £12.50 Festival Friends and Lowdham Horticultural Society Members

All tickets on sale now from ‘The Bookcase’ Lowdham.

Last Sunday, 15^th September was our coach trip to Waddesdon Manor and Gardens, Buckinghamshire.  The forecast had not been good, but we luckily escaped the showers!  We had a very interesting day walking around the gardens, then enjoying an excellent lunch in the Manor Restaurant, before going on a tour of the house and viewing the very impressive ‘Rothschild Collection’.

I think everyone who went, enjoyed themselves and would certainly recommend a day out there.  Maybe when the weather is a little warmer!

Our next planned visit is to Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and Anglesey Abbey on Sunday 2^nd March 2014.