On Tuesday 7th July, Kathy Brown from The Manor House in Stevington joined us to present a talk and slides entitled ‘The Edible Flower Garden’.  After an inspiring talk on the many ways to incorporate flowers into both sweet and savoury recipes, we had a break during which fancy small cakes were served.  All of them included a flower related ingredient.  We had lavender biscuits, sponge cake with essence of rose,  poppy seed cake, courgette and carrot muffins, sunflower bites and lavender flapjacks.  They were all very popular and washed down with ‘flower’ teas.  A special thank you must go to our Chairman, Linda, who spent many hours preparing the cakes and biscuits as well as to Mary who made the muffins.  After the break there was a further short talk from Kathy Brown on Clematis.

On 2nd June Gillian Poulain came up to our club in Bedford from her home in North London.  Despite having been in hospital the previous week, Gillian created 6 beautiful arrangements, each one representing a different ‘Golden Day’ from her busy life.  Some photographs from the evening are below:

Clare came over from her home in Wyboston to give us a lovely demonstration on the theme of ‘On the Spot’.  She produced 6 varied and interesting designs – all including a different aspect of Spots!  Below are some photos from the evening.

We also had our second ‘Your Turn’ feature, – for members to bring along an arrangement that they have made themselves.  This time the theme was ‘May Time’ and although we only had 4 entries, each of them was delightful.  A couple of photos are here ~

On Tuesday 7th April we had a really lovely evening at the Addison Centre with Lee Berrill, a florist from Northampton, who created 6 beautiful and bold arrangements along the theme of ‘Let’s be Different’.  Lee used some exotic and huge flowers together with some spectacular ‘mechanics’ which were much appreciated by the large audience that turned out to see him.  All 6 arrangements featured flowers in every shade and hue of orange, but with plenty of variety in texture and design.  Some photos of the finished arrangements are below.

We also had a new feature where members were able to ‘Have a Go’ and bring along an arrangement for others to see.  The title for tonight was ‘Take 5 Flowers’ – the idea being to use just 5 flowers to create something.  We had a lot of different ideas and designs and everyone was asked to vote for their favourite by placing a coin or coins beside it.  All the money raised was for our chosen charity for 2009 which is Road Victim Trust.  A selection of the entries are shown below.

On 3rd March Jackie O’Hare travelled down from Peterborough to visit our group and entertain us by making 6 lovely flower arrangements using lots of garden foliage along the theme of ‘The Mad March Hare’.  Despite the weather being cold and wet, lots of our members came along to watch Jackie and perhaps get some inspiration from her.  A few photos from the evening are below.