At our August meeting items on the agenda included our June 2017 coffee morning fundraiser for Denman, the Christmas shopping trip to Bristol, and our Open Meeting on October 4th when we will be supporting Guide Dogs for The Blind.

Local reorganisation next year will mean that we will be moving from the Elgar Group to the Malvern Hills Group. Our own groups are thriving and events are being organised for each one. There were no birthday posies this month, but Angela Jones was given Roses chocolates to celebrate hers, and as a thank you for providing posies for the rest of us.

Our speaker was Chrissie Ching, who gave an interesting talk on Lancelot “Capability” Brown. It is his tri-centenary this year and we can still see his influence today. Chrissie felt that “The Shakespeare of Gardening” must have been very confident to tackle such vast enterprises. He travelled miles on horseback when undertaking his landscape projects, designing gardens which not only looked beautiful, but contributed to the finances of stately homes; for instance, trees provided timber for the navy, and farm animals added to the income.

We were shown slides of some of his gardens - Stowe, Chatsworth, Warwick Castle, Croome, Blenheim and Hampton Court, and Chrissie explained that some people felt that he was a vandal, sweeping away formality to show what he felt the landscape was capable of. Serpentine shapes were used and turning every corner there would be an eye -catching view of each great house. You might hear a waterfall before you actually saw it; vistas were formed and classical statues brought back for the gardens from Grand Tours of Europe. Yet designs were practical too. Vegetables were kept away from the immediate vicinity of the house as the productive area could be noisy and the Ha- ha was introduced to keep cattle out of the gardens, whilst not spoiling the view from the house. Croome was his first commission and we now look forward to our visit in October, armed with much more knowledge

Our next meeting is on September 6th when we will be going behind the scenes with TV and film caterer, Richard Kendrick.

Angie Pulford.