Lydden Vale
Gardening Club
You don't need to have a large garden
to be interested in plants and like
growing them. Window sills, pots and
containers and house plants can
provide year round scope for the
enthusiast. So why don't you come
along and meet us?
Anyone interested in joining, please contact: Antony Parson Lydden Vale Gardening Club on Facebook
Buckland Newton Community Website
in the heart of rural Dorset
The Lydden Vale Gardening Club meets on the second
Wednesday of each month between September and April in the
Buckland Newton Village Hall enjoying a mixture of talks from
guest speakers, practical sessions where you can learn top tips for
all things gardening. During the summer months we visit award
winning gardens, garden centres and enjoy Alfresco Social
evenings.
We welcome all ages and levels of experience and are keen for all
generations to benefit from the enjoyment of gardening. If you live
in Buckland Newton, Pulham, Glanvilles Wootton, Kings Stag,
Alton Pancras or neighbouring parishes and if you’re interested in
having a fine garden or rewilding, planting or harvesting the results
of your labours, or simply visiting gardens and learning about the
history of gardening, we would love you to have you with us.
If you are not already a member of the Club and are interested in
gardening and think you might like to join, we would love to hear
from you. Please do get in touch by emailing Jan at
greystonebn@yahoo.co.uk or Antony at
Bladeley365@outlook.com
Our last meeting before the New Year took place on 12th
November when award winning Photojournalist, Lalage (Lally)
Snow, treated Members and Guests to fascinating illustrated talk
with the unusual title “MY FAMILY AND OTHER SEEDLINGS, a
year on a Dorset allotment. (All the things you never knew about
allotments, growing vegetables, war, motherhood and quantum
physics).”
Lally enlightened her audience of her experiences over the last two
decades in war-torn parts of the world including Afghanistan,
Palestine, Gaza and Ukraine, initially conveying images of the
destruction that was taking place around her before beginning to
understand and see the peaceful atmosphere that could exist in
gardens in these unfortunate parts of the world and the part that
gardeners could play in both the production of fresh flowers and
food as well as the creation of life whilst everything around them
was dying.
2022 saw Lally, her husband and young family move to the peace
and tranquillity of Sherborne, closely followed by the adoption of
an allotment which brought new opportunities, albeit that the task
of bringing the overgrown plot into production was not as easy as
she thought!
Lally went on to explain how she had researched a little about the
history of allotments. In the UK, these date back to the early 1800’s
when the government realised that their creation could be both
beneficial to the population’s wellbeing and made them better
workers as well as reducing the need for imports in times of war.
As in the UK, such plots and gardens had been in many ways,
lifesaving for the populations of the countries Lally had been
working in the two prior decades.
The Club’s next meeting will be on Wednesday 21st January in
the Buckland Newton Village Hall when Members and Guests will
have an opportunity to attend a Gardeners Question Time and
hopefully obtain answers from the Panel to the various problems
that they experience in their gardens. In addition, there will be a
short talk by Kevin Pope on the problems arising from the arrival of
the Asian Hornet in the UK.
Antony Parson
If you are interested in gardening, enjoy good talks, seeing other
gardens as well as your own, or experience problems with your
own garden that you would like to share and would welcome
advice on, the Gardening Club could be for you. Feel free to
contact Antony at Bladeley365@outlook.com or talk to Jan on
01300 348627.
