We are very lucky to be able to access many delightful old houses and gardens within relatively easy travelling distance. One such house and gardens is Hanbury Hall which became a National Trust property 50 years ago last year. We were delighted to welcome the Deputy Head Gardener Caroline to our meeting on April 1. Caroline gave us a bit of information on the history of the House but her main talk was on the Re-creation of the formal gardens. This has taken place over the past 20 years, the aim was to restore 20 acres of the land back to the original design by George London 300 years ago. Obviously this was a mammoth task and involved a lot of hard work and planning. The design of the original garden was used to plan the work. The Parterre was started in 1993 and took 3 to 4 years to establish.

We all know how much work is involved in looking after a garden, the hedges in the Parterre take 7 weeks to cut by hand. Over the years the fruit garden, formal vegetable garden and a beautifully colourful trench has been planted, all to enhance our visit. The talk was illustrated by colourful slides and Caroline was a very enthusiastic speaker who obviously loved her work and has certainly encouraged me to visit again, and, with an appreciation of the work that goes on at Hanbury Hall.

The next meeting of The Pershore Ladies Guild will be on Tuesday May 6 at the Civic Centre at 2pm, where our speaker will be Francis Smith who will be talking about his Time in Design at the BBC. We have welcomed some new members but we would be happy to welcome more.

At our meeting in March at the suggestion of one of our members we took a collection to send to victims of the floods at The Somerset Levels, the generosity of the group raised £130 which was topped up from club funds to enable us to send a cheque for £250 to ACRE [Action with Communities in Rural England] Thank you Ladies.

Marian Coulton