SOG’S AUTUMN/WINTER PROGRAMME
2024-2025
Meetings will be held on the 1st Wednesday of the month in The Bradbury Room, Drapers Place, Horsefair, Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury SY2 6BP unless otherwise stated.
7.30pm Start Time
A special first meeting to celebrate the 50th edition of the SOGS newsletter
6th November - Awareness of Bees and their importance in the Environment Alison Wakeman
Alison is an award winning beekeeper based in Shropshire. When she isn’t buzzing around the country giving educational talks, she runs her “ABC - Alison’s Bee Classes” and looks after her own hives. Alison’s talk is interesting, informative and, at times, entertaining. She will share a huge array of facts and figures about all types of bees before focusing on honey bees and their secret life in the hive. Because she has been taking her educational program into primary schools for over ten years, she will share numerous anecdotal observations, making her talk funny too!! Alison will bring plenty of local honey to purchases along with other bee-based items - ideal Xmas gifts.
4th December - Christmas Bring and Share and our Big Seed and Garden Paraphernalia Swap - Christmas Quiz/Competition
8th January (online Zoom meeting) - A 'Seedy' Saving talk Sue Strickland (SOGS member)
Sue was Head Gardener for Garden Organic at Ryton Organic Gardens for many years and also worked for their Heritage Seed Library. She is the author of numerous garden books. Now living near Newtown, Sue continues to write for mainstream gardening magazines such as Kitchen Garden and The Garden and is involved with the Gaia Foundation's Seed Sovereignty programme and the Wales Seed Hub. She is passionate about fruit and veg growing and has a special interest in vegetable seed saving. Sue’s talk will cover a short history of UK seed, from sales at medieval markets to today’s multinationals, then lots of practical tips on saving your own seeds. We hope to follow this up with an ‘on the ground’ practical session during the late summer visits programme.
5th February - Final details for Potato Day followed by: A Final Update from Shepherd's Barn Sam and Kate Davies
Sam and Kate Davies have been self sufficient in fruit and vegetables for almost 20 years. They began when they both worked full time and had two allotments. Now they have a smallholding which SOGS visited a few years ago. On top of the veg and fruit growing they also keep goats and bees and their ornamental garden is also pretty extensive! The most often asked question by visitors is how they manage to fit it all in and their latest talk attempts to answer this. Sam will explore methods of cutting down the work needed to keep your veg tasty and your flowers beautiful if you don't have much time or are getting older like he is! We will have a final visit to their smallholding in summer 2025.
Saturday February 8th - Potato Day - Wattlesborough Village Hall
5th February - Foraging Dr Cath Price
Cath is the Membership and Engagement Officer based at the Shropshire Wildlife Trust and an expert on Foraging (and lots of other things). (further details on this talk to follow)
2nd April - AGM
Plus: Speakers from each of the Growing Projects that SOGs have donated funds to in the last 12 months to give us updates on how they used the money.