Gardening Report 8 Oct 2018

The gardening group met on Monday the 8th of October in Maureen’s home.

Our main purpose at this time of the year was to share herbaceous plants. This is a fantastic opportunity to get plants from fellow Gardeners and each and everyone gives very generously..
There was a great variety available from calla lilies, irises, blue and yellow, Yarrow,various daisies, rudbeckia Japanese anemones some routed cuttings of houseplants.
When we go to garden centres and see the cost of a tiny slip of any of these plants we are so grateful to have good friends and interested gardeners who are willing to share.

Some members had not got round to digging up plants but had brought samples of those they can share, and this they will do later in the season.

We confirmed plans for our trip to Botanic Palm House and ravine next month and looked further ahead to the making of our Christmas table centres.

These will be all made by group members and will consist of mainly fresh foliage with perhaps a little artificial addition if necessary.
Each will be different of course which will make the whole thing more interesting and we hope that each will have a Christmas candle in the centre.
They will be placed on the tables at U3A Christmas lunch and will be for sale at a minimum cost of £5.
Anybody who has looked in the past for a fresh foliage table centre for Christmas will realise that they cost a great deal more than this, so if anybody wishes to pay more than £5 in aid of the gardening project at Nelson Street that would be great.
Refreshments were provided which everybody enjoyed and appreciated.
The minimum contribution we gather for these refreshments is useful because it enables us to use the money and go ahead and do things like buy the Oasis and the circular dishes for the proposed table centres.
We are using our minimal funds very wisely, as one member said, you have to speculate to accumulate!
This we are hoping to do at Christmas by making a minimum of £100 to add to the £130 we’ve already gathered this year for the gardening Project..

Unfortunately we have no photographs to share with you this month because our talented photographer I was unable to attend.

See you all next month when we will have a report along with photographs of us in the tropical Ravine.
A good place to be in early November in Belfast!

Best wishes

Maureen