A midsummer welcome to all our members, and especially to all those who have joined our ranks this year. Our recent recruiting drive has been so successful that we now have more members than we signed up in the whole of last year!
This year we introduce Silvana Briers from Ashton-in-Makerfield, as our new General Secretary. Silvana took over from Jean McEvoy after the AGM in February and she already has her feet well under the table! Other welcome new additions to the committee are Silvana’s other half Mike, Brian O’Shea, and Fred Dickinson. Jean McEvoy left the committee after the AGM and Heather Cartwright left us in March but hopes she will be able to join us again some time in the future.
SOUTHPORT FLOWER SHOW We still have seats left on the coach to Southport for the first day of the Flower Show on Thursday 19th August. The coach leaves the Blue Bell Hotel, High Street, Newton at 9.15am and picks up at the Harrow at Culcheth at about 9.25am, leaving from Southport about 5.0pm. The cost is £14 and this includes coach fare and entrance to the Show – a good price. The Southport Flower Show claims to combine a seaside atmosphere with a celebration of all that is best from the gardening world. It is the largest independent flower show in the country and attracts over 100,000 visitors each year. You can book at the Hut, and a deposit of £5 per person is required on booking with the balance to be paid about two weeks before the trip. We don’t want to have to collect money on the day!
SALES HUT Bill Hart our Hut Manager is pleased to announce that sales have been brisk in the first half of this year, helped no doubt by the large influx of new members following our successful recruiting campaign. Our special offer of 100litre bags of Levington multi-purpose compost at £4.50 is unfortunately finally coming to an end, so if you would like a bag - be quick! Our latest new lines are 80litre bags of good quality peat for £1.99 a bag, wood shavings suitable for mulching also at £1.99 per bag, and bags of good top-soil for £1.50 each.
Later on we will have spring bulbs on sale – daffodils, narcissi, crocuses, and tulips – probably towards the end of August. These will also be on sale at the Flower Show on Saturday 11th of September.
PLANTS Thank you very much to all those who have helped us by donating plants this year. Together with the plants we purchased as plugs, and those grown by committee members, we have had a wonderful variety of interesting plants for sale at the Polytunnel which have been sold at extremely reasonable prices, and we still have quite a lot of perennials and herbs left. New to the committee this year, Brian O’Shea has done a considerable amount of work to make the plant-selling area more attractive, and to make better use of the space available. More improvements are planned to be carried out during the winter months. Full marks to Brian!
CROSSWORD Our crossword compiler has produced another very easy crossword. This is enclosed with the newsletter and there will be a prize of a £10 Hut Voucher for the first correct solution picked out from all those received, and a £5 prize for the second correct solution. Our congratulations to Kath Johnson of Newton Road Lowton who was the winner of the last Prize Puzzle, with Jessie Marriott of High Street Newton as the runner up.
2004 PROGRAMME It is very pleasing to announce that all our evening meetings this year to date have been well-attended. Veronica Finney’s excellent talk and demonstration on Hanging Baskets in April was especially popular with 90 members and their friends attending. When we invite Veronica of Lumber Lane Nursery in Burtonwood to visit us again, we will have to find a larger venue!
We have one more evening meeting this year which will be in October. This will be a Floral Art Demonstration by Amanda Morrison from Warrington on Thursday 28th of October, and it will be held as usual at the Kirkfield Hotel in Church Street, Newton, commencing at 7.30pm.
GRAND FLOWER & VEGETABLE SHOW 2004
The 2004 Grand Flower & Vegetable Show will be held at St. Aelred’s Technology College in Birley Street, Newton, on Saturday 11th September
As last year the show will be held in the sports hall at St. Aelred’s where we are now able to stage the whole show in the same room and have much more space at our disposal as well. In the show schedule we have all the usual classes for Flowers, Vegetables, Fruit, Pot Plants, Floral Art, Cookery, and Photography. For the children this time in addition to the usual classes for a “vegetable animal” and a “vase of garden flowers” we also have a picture for them to colour in. At the show we will also have plants, spring bulbs, and books for sale, and of course there will be tea and biscuits, a tombola, and a raffle
Copies of the show schedule have been sent out to previous exhibitors, but if you have not entered before and you would like a schedule then please ring our Show Secretary Ursula Siney on 01942 274584, or pick up a copy from the Hut or from Newton Library. The schedule is also available on line at our web site www.nlwgardeners.homestead.com
Sadly many of our cups and trophies were disposed of a few years ago but one has recently “re-surfaced.”
It is the H.K. Jeacock Trophy which was presented in memory of Mr. Jeacock, a former chairman and keen chrysanthemum grower, who died in 1964. The trophy will be cleaned up and presented at the show this year to the winner of the most points in the chrysanthemum classes.
The show will be open to the public from 2.00pm to 5.00pm, and the prize giving ceremony will be held at 4.30pm followed by the auction of produce.
The cost of staging our flower show goes up every year. We have to hire the school, pay for insurance, print the schedule and prize cards, and then of course there is the prize money! So any help we can get with extra income is very welcome. If you would like to help by sponsoring a class or classes in the show, a donation of £3.20 will usually cover the prize money for one class. You can sponsor in your own name or in memory of a loved one and for each sponsored class a certificate will be placed on the show benches. So far this year our grateful thanks go to MTB Motors Newton-le-Willows, for sponsoring the photography classes to the tune of £25, and The Royal Botanical Society of Manchester & Northern Counties for a donation of £50. We would also be grateful for as many tombola prizes as possible, also plants and books to sell. We know that support in past years has been excellent, so if you would like to help again, then please bring your prizes, plants and books along to the Hut – they will be very welcome.
The downside to using the sports hall is that we have much farther to carry the tables for the show benches, so if any members would like to help the committee set up the tables for the show on Friday evening – 5.30pm at St. Aelred’s, and after the show on Saturday to return the tables to the classrooms, then you will all be very welcome.
Please do your best to enter something in the show – it is only 10p for each entry, and free for over 60s and children! It is very important that you read the show schedule very carefully, especially the rules and regulations. If you haven’t entered before, there will be stewards on hand to show you where to put your exhibit, and how to stage it to the best advantage. If you feel a little too nervous to exhibit this time, then at least come along and see the show, and you will see how easy it all is, and quite likely you will come to the conclusion that your own pot plant or cabbage which you left at home is better than those on display!
Sandwiches, tea, and coffee will be available for exhibitors staging on Friday evening.
And don’t forget – please bring your tombola prizes, plants, books, etc. to the Hut in time for the Show on the 11th of September
WINWICK CARNIVAL We have been invited once again to man a stall at the Carnival on Saturday 17th of July.
A brand new gazebo has been purchased from which we will be promoting the Association and selling plants and sundries, with a hands-on planting demonstration for the children. We have a lot of members in Winwick and district who no doubt will be attending the carnival, so we would like you all to come and visit our stall and introduce yourselves.
KEN HART
We are very sorry to announce the death of Ken Hart. Ken joined the committee after taking early retirement in 1977, and was our Chairman from 1980 until 1985. These were very busy times for the Gardeners’ Association and Ken was always determined to be involved in all our various activities. He was a keen gardener and an excellent Chairman who remained a loyal member of the Association until he died in October last year.
ROB LANE ALLOTMENTS ASSOCIATION
At last – St. Helens Council have given their blessing to the merger between our two Associations! The necessary changes to the constitution were agreed at the AGM last year, and it is hoped that we will be in a position to implement the merger later this year. After the merger the Allotments Committee will continue the work of administering the Rob Lane site on behalf of St. Helens Council, as a sub-committee of the Gardeners’ Association, instead of as a separate body. The merger will remove a lot of confusion that has existed for many years through having two organisations with similar interests operating on the same site, and future funding applications for improvements to the allotment site should benefit through having the extra weight of the Gardeners’ Association with its 600 plus membership.
PROJECT UPDATE St. Helens Council have told us that our project to replace the Hut with a new more secure
building with better facilities is too ambitious, and the proposed building is too large. We are therefore now working on a modified plan which we hope will be more favourably received.
NEWSLETTERS
This time last year we asked if those of you who are on the internet would like to receive their newsletters as attachments to e-mails to help reduce our printing and distribution costs. This seemed to us a sensible way forward – making use of modern technology, but unfortunately we only received two responses! We do now have however a list of some e-mail addresses including those of some of the newer members which we have collected from the recent membership application forms which were included with our promotional leaflet. We have been using this list to advertise forthcoming events from time to time, and as no-one has objected so far we would like to continue with this. Of course your addresses will not under any circumstances be passed on to any other organisation. Again we would like to ask those who wish to receive their newsletters in this way to please let us know on inimeg29@netscape.net Or alternatively if you don’t want to receive attachments we could advise you when the newsletter has been published on the web site and you could just read it there, or print a copy for yourself. Please let us know what you would like us to do.
If any of you would like to help deliver newsletters in any part of Newton and district please contact our General Secretary Silvana Briers on 01942 717030. It is only twice a year and need not take up a lot of your time.
ST. PETER’S SCHOOL
Over the last two years Alistair Walton has organised gardening lessons on the allotments for pupils of St. Peter’s C.E. Primary School. The programme for the summer term this year has now ended but we hope to re-introduce the sessions next term on the occasional Wednesday afternoon from 3.30pm
to around 4.15pm. The instruction we give is quite basic – mainly how to prepare the ground, how to sow seeds and how to plant. If any of you would like to help with this please contact Alistair on 01925 224273 or leave your
name and telephone number at the Hut. What we would like is to have a pool of willing volunteers to draw on each time, as at present only a few people are involved and the same ones are being asked every time.
WORLD WIDE WEB Please visit our web site at www.nlwgardeners.homestead.com
We would like to know what you think about our web site. Our webmaster tells us that he is hoping to include some gardening articles, and the first one, about the fertilisers we sell at the Sales Hut is being prepared now and should be published fairly soon. If you have any comments about the site
please contact the webmaster at inimeg29@netscape.net or sign the guest book and leave your comments there.
