Members Day

Alison Penno with part of one of her designs

Wow! What a great day we had. Our new Chairman, Pip Bensley, and President, Marion Catt, were on hand to greet everyone and welcome them to the venue.

The day started out with a welcome coffee or tea while everyone caught up with friends. The area management team were on hand to talk about everything that is happening.

Coffee and chat were the order of the day to start with

Val Hockley our Education Rep was in the key spot this year with Marina Dewey and Eileen Witt from her hardworking Education Team. They had created a series of foam free designs to inspire club workshops.

Val Hockley showing off designs that clubs can reproduce at their practice evenings

Frances Barnett, our Media Officer was on hand with details of special events happening round the area in the next few months.

Andrea Hillyard from the Area Show Team had schedule information for everyone to see. The schedule has been emailed to all the competitors from last year’s show and to all club chairmen to share. It is also available here on the website.

Andrea Hillyard introducing the new show schedule

Volunteers from around the club were there to run the Tombola. We are enormously grateful to everyone who had donated such lovely prizes.

From the tombola it was on to shopping. The lovely Rob Hardy was on hand outside the hall with a fabulous selection of perennials from Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants.

Wonderful plants from Rob Hardy

In the hall Carole Norman was in fine form with Margo Crouch selling all our gifts and publications and letting everyone know about The Flower Arranger Magazine.

Sarah McBain from Wrap Up In Style brought her wonderful printed scarves and dresses again. Alex Bensley was there with a big selection of vintage mantle vases and ikebana dishes from Pip Bensley.

Chris Wolfe was on hand from Southeast Flowers with a great selection of sundries for every occasion. Lesley from Love Is Peace had an extremely popular range of new handbags that everyone was enjoying along with some wonderful bird cabins made by her husband.

Handbags and Vases creating lots of interest

Our Judges Rep Michael Bowyer was in action making sure everything was running smoothly in the sales hall and the auditorium while Yasmin Reilly was snapping away while our members enjoyed their day.

The serious business got underway with speaker Jim Buttress. Many of you will know Jim from the The Big Allotment Challenge where he starred on the BBC along with the lovely Jonathan Moseley. Jim is the most senior RHS Judge and he held us fascinated with his story from young lad to friend of royalty. His talk was wonderful - uplifting and emotional!

Jim Buttress held the audience fascinated

Then it was time for lunch. For those that didn’t want to have to think about preparing their own lunch the team from TASTE Dining Company were ready to go with a delicious lunch of beautiful homemade quiche in a choice of three flavours with home made salads on the side followed by either a delicious fruit pavlova or a rich baked chocolate cheesecake with creme Anglais. Those who had brought their own packed lunch were able to have a good catch up with everyone else in the picnic rooms.

After a final shopping session it was time to move into the theatre again for the final part of the day - the demonstration. Alison Penno had been recommended to us by Michael Bowyer who had seen her take her National Demonstrators test a few years ago. She had been menat to come to us sooner but the pandemic had intervened so it was good to see her here at last.

Alison Penno with a wonderful pedestal

Alison has been chosen to do the big demo at the National Show at Gloucester with fellow demonstrator Delyth Price and we can see why. Her designs, under the title Floral Idols, were superb and really wowed our audience. We decided to let everyone choose which design they won in the raffle and some very happy ladies left the hall at the end of the day clutching some really gorgeous designs.

Thank you so much to all our members for coming and supporting our big fundraiser for the year and to everyone who worked so hard to make it such a great day, we couldn’t have doen it without you.

See you all next year on 10th April!