May guest speaker report

Our speaker this month was Kevin Thomas with a talk entitled Victorian Gardening. Kevin is one of our regular speakers and, as usual, entertained us with a fascinating insight of how things were done in the `olden` days.

He brought 2 items of glassware that would have been used by head gardeners – one was a cucumber straightener and the other was a container used to hold water to keep grapes fresh, ready to be presented at the dinner table for the lord and lady of the manor`s guests to enjoy.

Kevin`s talk was supported by photos of the plants of the time, including cut flowers for the house, and soil preparation in the kitchen gardens ready for all the fruit and vegetables that were grown throughout the seasons. The Victorian greenhouses were used to produce crops like grapes, peaches and nectarines and had pipes running underneath or along the walls to keep them heated throughout the winter months. The structures were beautiful in themselves!

Thank you to Kevin for an enjoyable evening ( and for bringing plants to sell) and for everyone who attended.

Our next talk, entitled `Mixture of flowers and plants for the season`, by Mark Ashton, will be held on Wednesday June 26th at 7.30pm.