Our April meeting was a talk and slide show by Lucy Redman from the Lucy Redman School of Garden Design at Rushbrooke. Lucy gave an entertaining and informative talk, both on her garden at Rushbrooke and also places where she has worked in the past, such as Wisley and Otley College. She now runs two courses from Rushbrooke, a one day plantaholic course, and also a ten week garden design course. She has a great love for all manner of plants, as well as a wonderful sense of humour which comes through in various ways in her garden.

Lucy has helped with the planning and setting up of three gardens for the Chelsea Flower Show and one of her ambitions is to design her own for Chelsea. She is very busy at the moment working on plans for a garden design to submit to the committee for Chelsea, 2007, and is looking for sponsorship should her garden plan be accepted.

The audience enjoyed her talk and slides very much and the Society hopes to visit Lucy's garden on the evening of Thursday 29th June and more details of this visit will be available in the near future.

Members were reminded of the evening visit to Sperrinks Nurseries at Gazeley on Thursday, 4th May and also of our Bring and Buy evening on the 15th May. Hopefully, we will have lots of plants, cuttings and seedlings, etc. to sell at this event and also, hopefully, lots will come along and support the Society. There is to be a very informal question and answer session that evening, so have a think about any particular garden problem that you are experiencing and we can all talk about it that evening. Another member may well have a solution to a particular problem that you yourself have not thought about. A gardening problem shared and talked about may well be able to be sorted out, so do give this some thought before the evening.

Our Flower Show on the 8th July is fast approaching, and free Schedules are now available from Steve Coe, or the village shop. There are lots of different types of entries, fruit, vegetables, flowers, herbs, flower arranging, cookery, handicrafts and particular items for children's entries. So do pick up a Schedule and have a good look through it and see what you can enter. If you have not entered in previous years, it is very easy, and any committee member would be only too pleased to give advice. In the Schedule are details of the *Garden Competition.* Last year we only had four entries for this, and we are hoping to have more this year. There are some beautiful gardens in Wickhambrook and nearby villages, so please do give this some thought as well. Details of entry are in the Schedule and as well as the two cups - The Giffords Cup for the Best Cottage Garden and the William and Nancy King Cup for the Best Kept Flower Garden, there are 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes of £3, £2 and £1 and it is only 20p to enter your garden. Closing date is the 24th June and judging will take place on Monday evening, 26th June.

Jackie Fieldsend
Chairman