WEDNESDAY brought another interesting and enjoyable evening at Bishampton Village Hall when members and five visitors were allowed into the world of flowers and stories of Katherine Kear from Gloucester.

Her title “The Little Green Orchard” was based on the poem by Walter de la Mare which she had first heard at school. She started by reading the first verse of this lovely poem and then commenced to set her arrangements to depict various aspects of her garden. She did admit that she had used a great deal of licence in her descriptions which caused a great deal of laughter. During Katherine “chat” about her garden whilst arranging her flowers her audience was heard to be laughing a great deal, but unknown to us Katherine's unique way had taught everyone in the room a little more about the history of flower arranging and the basic knowledge a person needs to create such designs.

Katherine's designs ranged from a very large ceramic vase and golden coconut spades and using copper beach, ferns and bergenia leaves with green chrysanthemums, lovely pink peonies and bi-coloured hydrangeas she created a balance between negative and positive space with soft lines of foliage to breakdown the dominance of the container.

Her second arrangement was a way of explaining that the linear design originated from china. By using a blue and white Chinese vase she showed a diverse selection of every day plants which originated from all round the world. Katherine mentioned how roses grown in China were packed into panniers of donkeys then travelled along the Silk Route to Europe.

Her third design depicted her wild garden and the fourth showed us how to arrange flowers without the need of oasis by using twigs and small spray chrysanthemums. Her next arrangement was in lovely white pottery container on top of which she had made an obelisk of back bamboo which was then filled with good old fashioned snap dragons, hydrangeas, yellow roses and white chrysanthemums.

The final arrangement gave us wonderful different textures, shapes and forms and lead us to understand her orchard at the bottom of the garden. Her real treat was a large array of anthuriums in a wide range of colours which was spectacular. Katherine ended by reading the remainder of her poem and reminding us that there is always someone or something happening in our gardens.

Sheanagh Hickson was invited to give the vote of thanks. The evening had been a great success with tea, coffee and cakes being served at the start of the evening raising valuable funds towards our Area's exhibit to be staged at Chelsea 2016.

JILL MILLARD