It was an encouraging start to the new gardening year with a hall full of people including new member Rosina and a visitor. Marion welcomed everyone to the meeting with a few announcements.

The RHS Affiliation recognition award for this year went to Bob Newell in appreciation of his commitment to the society.

Two of our vice presidents, Teresa Baker and Tim Shaw, have recently decided to step down and we greatly appreciate their many years of dedication to the society.

We are now very pleased to welcome Yvonne King and Newton Hatch as two new vice presidents.

We are also delighted to welcome Sandra Hodson into the role of our new President – congratulations to them all.

We send our best wishes to Patsy who is recovering from a stroke, and we send our sincere condolences to the family of Mary Bryant, a long-standing and devoted member of the former Totton Gardeners’ Society.

Our speaker for the night was Pauline on ‘ You, Your Garden and Climate Change.’After retiring she studied at Sparsholt College on various RHS courses and set up a garden design school for three years with her husband.

With great enthusiasm Pauline spoke about climate change and how to help the environment and your garden.

Carbon dioxide has increased rapidly in the last 100 years and this can be seen in your garden with the changing of the seasons. Pauline explained lots of dos and don’ts:

Don’t use peat! You don’t need peat to grow plants. Try Melcourt Sylvagrow, or make your own compost or use mushroom compost, coir, bark, animal manure, wood fibre, grit, perlite or vermiculite – there are lots of alternatives.

Plant your garden up in three layers for better biodiversity, with perennials at the bottom, shrubs as a middle layer and trees at the top.

Try to avoid annuals. Afew of them are great but sow direct into the soil to avoid using compost, pots, plastic, and less watering is needed.

Buy organically grown or bare root perennials.

Remove some lawn and plant up a new border. Lawns are still important though. Create areas for old wood and concrete for bugs to nest in.

Less going to landfill. Make a green roof on your shed. It requires zero maintenance and absorbs carbon.

Use greenhouse soil by removing the concrete or slabs and plant direct in the soil. Less watering is needed.

Do save water wherever you can in water butts.

Ponds are important. Plant around them to give shade for less water evaporation. Don’t use poisons, pesticides or herbicides.

Encourage your children to grow for the future.

Be organic and always No Dig! This allows the natural fungi and bacteria to do the work and let the earthworms do the rest.

On a final note Pauline was concerned about the Australian flatworm that is now increasing in this country and eats our earthworms.

It’s salmon-pink in colour and can be found at night. It can’t be destroyed by chopping it up, use bleach.

Chris and Therese kindly served the refreshments and the raffle was kindly organised by Marion, Shirley and Paula.

The flower of the month was judged by our speaker. In third place Jo Chillcott with a viburnum, second Sandy with a variegated holly and first, Sue Nisbet with a cotoneaster stem with berries.

Next month we meet at Copythorne Parish Hall on Thursday 19th February at 7.30pm for a talk on Conservatory and House Plants by Wilf Simcox. Visitors always welcome, £2.00 entry.