Bob and Cath Saunders, who live in the village and have a Nursery called Cath’s Garden Plants near Heaves, came to the meeting on October 13th. Bob, assisted by Cath, gave a talk and showed us examples of autumn flowering plants and plants with autumn colour. Examples of shrubs with autumn colour were Hydrangea paniculata, initially with white pyramidal flowers which then change to greenish-pink in the autumn, a red-stemmed Cornus with golden leaves that turn to pink, Acers which have a fantastic range of autumn colours and smaller ones which can be grown in pots, Ceratostigma with blue flowers and hardy fuschias which flower in summer through to the first frosts.
Bob then moved on to autumn flowering plants such as Nerine and Schizostylis (lilies), gentians, some red hot pokers, some geraniums and geums and Heuchera. Autumn crocus look good when planted in the grass. Hardy ferns provide greenery all year round and there is a new mini pampas grass with white feathery fronds.
Bob and Cath are very knowledgeable plantsmen and the talk was both interesting because all the plants were there to see and informative. In fact Bob gave us a lot of useful tips throughout the talk. There was quite a lot of interest in buying the plants afterwards.
Jean White and Barbara Garnett were the joint winners of the competition for a plant. Of interest to note, Nether Kellet WI now has its own Facebook page.
On November 10th we spent an excellent evening decorating Christmas biscuits with Angela Rodger who lives in the village and used to make cakes as a profession.
She provided each of us with five Christmas shape biscuits and piping bags of red, white, green and blue Royal icing, so she had put in a tremendous amount of preparation for the evening. She had decorated each of her biscuits as an example for us and then took us through the stages of decorating our own. Everyone went quiet and the concentration was intense as we all tried to follow Angela’s instructions and produce beautifully iced Christmas biscuits. There were some problems along the way which Angela sorted out but in the end we were all very pleased with our efforts and they tasted good too.
The competition for a seasonal recipe was won by Barbara Bellis with very amusing instructions for how to make a gin Christmas cake and Barbara Garnett was second. Our coffee morning on October 26th in Bolton-le-Sands raised £235 for Morecambe RNLI.
Visitors are welcome to come to our meeting on January 12th when Stephen Halliwell will be talking about snowdrops.