Newsletter – July - September 2023

I hope you haven’t been washed out by all the recent rain – at least we don’t have to water our gardens
at the moment!

The Society has had a good year so far, with a successful Spring Show and one of our trips (to
Inglewood) already under our belts, and lots to look forward to. Our other trip – the RHS Garden
Bridgewater – is now fully booked, as is The Pat Turner Memorial Lecture on 1 November, where our
special guest speaker is Adam Frost. I trust you have all bought your tickets.

We were delighted to see the return of the Garden Trail this year – the weather was kind to us. We’d like
to thank those members who opened up their gardens and we hope those of you who came to visit
enjoyed them as much as we did.

Summer Show
Our next event in the village hall is our Summer Show on Saturday, 12 August. We do hope that lots of
you will enter so that we have our usual stunning displays. If you haven’t entered before, do have a go –
there’ll be plenty of people on hand to help you set up your exhibits or give advice. We’d like to
encourage your children or grandchildren to enter the children's categories – it’s always lovely to
have their contributions.
Entry forms need to be received by Wednesday, 9 August – you can post them or drop them off with me
(6 Flag Lane North, Upton CH2 1LE) or Susan (8 Grangeside, Upton CH2 1DL). Staging will be on the
Friday evening from 7.00 to 9.00 pm and on Saturday morning from 8.00 am to 10.45 am. And if you
can’t find your schedule, then you can download it from our website here:
https://www.uptonhorticulturalsociety.co.uk/schedule/

Programme
Our next monthly meeting will be on Wednesday, 6 September, when the speaker will be John
Millington of Hillview Hardy Plants with a talk entitled ‘The Dry Garden’ and our competition will be a pot
of succulents. At the September meeting, we’ll also be selling tickets for our Christmas Festivity, which
will be on Thursday, 7 December, if it’s not too soon to be planning our Christmas activities!
At our following meeting on Wednesday, 4 October, Barry Grain, head gardener at Cholmondeley
Castle, will give us a talk on the gardens there, and the competition will be a vase of autumn foliage.
Our Autumn Show will be held on Saturday, 7 October.

Our Committee
If you’d like to help out with the Society and have a say in how it is run, we are always happy to
welcome new committee members to spread the workload. We are especially keen to find a new
Chairman, so if you think you might be able to take on this role, do let us know. We would also
appreciate if anyone could volunteer to help out when committee members are away, for example,
selling raffle tickets or serving refreshments at meetings and other events. Speak to any of us on the
committee if you’d like more information.
 

Helen Gardiner

Treasurer