Events - Wiltshire - Alpine Garden Society

Wiltshire Group

Fund Raising Plant Sales

As I travel around giving talks it has become obvious that membership is falling whether it be AGS groups or local Garden Clubs. Whatever the reason may be, falling membership means less money coming in and therefore less money that can go out for speakers or any other benefits. Consequentely there comes a time when decisions have to be made in order that the group can be kept viable. At a recent committee meeting Caroline suggested that external plant sales may be a way of raising funds as plant sales at group meetings raised very little money with such a low membership as our group. Taking this idea on board and bearing in mind that the Wiltshire Group is a rural group with membership spread over a wide area a display area and sales table was booked at the Melksham Gardeners Society annual Show on 4th September 2011. A wide range of plants were brought together at very short notice, Jon Royds, Paul Kempster and Ian Robertson supplied lots of herbaceous plants, always a good seller, and Don & Heather Hyde brought along some cyclamen and some other alpines in flower to show what we were about. Paul & Gill Ranson put on a display of dionysias in various stages of growth and supplimented the display with a number of photos of their wonderful prize winning plants. This display attracted a lot of attention although some of the public thought they were cacti.

Publicity material supplied by Pershore was on display into which we inserted details of our group, only time will tell if this increases membership, and a number of back bulletins were offered for sale at a bargain price of £1.00, although there were no takers for these. Jon did an excellent job as a salesman taking £62 on the day and seling a further £12 worth from his drive during the following few days. As a further boost Melkshan Gardeners didn't charge us for the table space for whch we thank them. Although not an enormous amount was raised for the first sales table mainly due to it being at very short notice it was felt that this method of fund raising was worth persuing in future and a spring plant sale has been proposed for 2012.

Some photo's taken by our hosts can be viewed on their website by clicking on this link Melksham Gardeners Society and they have also provided us with an e-mail address to which we can send our newsletters which will go to around 60 people. This we hope will bring our group to the attention of more people and perhaps result in some new members.

Summer Workshops
For a some time now instead of the annual coach outing the group has held a practical workshop at the June meeting. This has ranged from propagation to making troughs from fish boxes as per Ian Young at Alpines 2001. An interesting evening that was with bits of polystyrene floating around the room and a difficult hoovering job afterwards.

For the last three years by popular demand the workshop has been focused on a practical digital camera evening. This has taken place at Mead Nursery owned by two of our members Steve & Emma Lewis-Dale. All members are given the same list of mini projects to carry out during the evening such as self portraits, macro photography and monochrome pictures. These evenings are very popular and end with tea and cake or biscuits. The resulting photos are downloaded to a laptop and over the autumn they are resized, sharpened, cropped etc and a Powerpoint presentation of the photos given at the December meeting. There is also a small competition within this presentation where members vote for their best photo and a bottle of wine going to the winter. In this section some of the photos taken in 2010 are shown (including the photographers).

Meet some of the photographers

Graham who organised it all.

Graham again this time lying down on the job.

Our tea girl Dot who with her husband John organises the coffee & tea at all our meetings. She is a good photographer as well.

Ian does it the American style

and Jon shows his ingenuity with a couple of handy crates.

Steve usually looks after the logistics during the photoshoot but this time he took over from Emma and became a photographer for the evening.

Paul always comes up with something different even if it's large files to download to the laptop.

Terri always puts us to shame taking brilliant photos with her tiny compact diggi camera

Don gets down to business.

Grahame was a late comer to the evening but showed his ability to take a self portrait.

Steve & Emma Lewis-Dale our hosts for the photoshoot at their nursery.

Macro photography
This is always a challenge but somehow our photographers produce some stunning photos of the plants in Steve & Emma's garden.

Phil Phillips always impressed on photographers to take the whole habitat then the plant and finally

How a sempervivum became interesting. This is the whole habitat.

Now we are getting closer.

And now a close up of the plant.

Another whole habitat.

In closer.

And now the whole plant.

And here is another showing the whole habitat.

In closer.

And really close up now.

In the project we also had textures, monochrome using the monochrome mode on the camera and taking a picture of a leaf with water on it. There were some good shots as you can see.

An old railway sleeper.

A tyre on a plant trolley.

A seed head and its shadow.

A poppy with petal falling

Here is a very clever shot of a blade of grass with water.

Shooting as the water runs down the leaf.

I hope all this has been interesting and maybe of some benefit to others groups who are looking for ideas. The aim of the workshop is to get members familiar with their cameras and so be able to take better pictures of plants.

Graham Nicholls

Wiltshire