Meeting: 25 September 2018

Our speaker at the September meeting of the Orleton and District Gardening Club was the well-known T.V. and radio presenter, Christine Walkden. She entertained a sell-out crowd of around 150 members and guests for an hour and a half with her talk on “Gardens of the UK”. With many eye catching photographs but entirely without notes her audience was taken on an entertaining journey to many of the most iconic gardens around the country – beginning on St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, where an essential skill of any gardener is the ability to abseil!
Some of the gardens were very well known – such as Sissinghurst and West Dean but others, such as East Rushton Old Vicarage in Norfolk, were less familiar to many of the audience.
Christine’s aim was to pinpoint aspects of each garden that made them stand out above the rest and in particular made them worth visiting on more than one occasion and in different seasons – vividly portrayed by her photographs and a point that our speaker made more than once.
Christine Walkden has appeared on many T.V. and radio gardening programmes including her own popular series “Glorious Gardens from Above”. At present she is a regular contributor to The One Show and Gardener’s Question Time.
At the end of the evening members of the audience posed questions and a mini- Gardener’s Question Time ensued!
The meeting ended with light refreshments.