THIRTY eight members and two guests, including one ‘junior’, met at Bishampton Village Hall on Wednesday, July 19 and welcomed Julia Mitchell from Warwick. Her evening of flower arranging demonstrations was called “A Day at the Races”. Her first arrangement was in a box in which she originally grew lettuces without much success and which she decorated with small squares of felt in varying shades of green. This was to represent the starting and finishing post and she used green foliage and mostly green flowers including green trick, a member of the sweet William family, and greeny yellow carnations. Next the picnic basket with smoked salmon and cucumber sandwiches was represented by foxtail ferns with bright orange gerberas, phormium leaves (the rye bread), orange kangaroo paw, salmon coloured roses called ‘soduko’. For Ascot Races, she created a dramatic arrangement of a hat on top of a tall slim glass vase using small sprigs of purple lisianthus with rolled aspidistra leaves and more of the salmon coloured roses. Then she added stems of pannicum fountain and purple clematis as extra adornment. At the races, there is always Prosecco or champagne. For this she used a tall champagne glass decorated with eucalyptus and other variegated leaves with white lilies. The bubbles floating upwards were creamy white snapdragons, white lisimachia, side shoots from white larkspur – all beautifully frothy! Julia finished off her demonstration in the Royal Enclosure – a tall purple glass container in which she used stems of the shrimp plant, ferns, hellebore leaves, tall cotoneaster to which she added pale pink larkspur, with bright pink roses and sprigs of the purple clematis. Finally she added a few stems of trailing jasmine from her garden. Julia was as entertaining as she was inspiring and gave everyone a really enjoyable evening sending the lucky raffle winners home with beautiful arrangements.

There is no meeting in August, so the next demonstration will be on Wednesday, the 20th September and guests are very welcome as always to join members of the Flower Club at 7.30 p.m. at the usual venue.

DINAH WOOD