Bromley All Hands Garden Group

Sandy Boden talks about Bromley U3A's All Hands Gardening group which started earlier this year.

January 2019 saw the birth of the ‘All Hands’ garden group, with the theme ‘For people who like to be a bit more Hands on’. Here’s how it started:-

Our first meeting at my house had nine people crammed round the dining table. The discussion roamed over many topics with barely a pause. People were very enthusiastic and I thought, “This might just work”.

There was a second ‘first meeting’ to accommodate all the people who could not make the first one. And so it continued, with an outing a month, plant sales in May and meetings in a very apt allotment building in the winter months, including our Christmas party.

2020 began and we had just had our first outing in early March when the world stopped. I hated to think we would lose our group activities and the sheer fun of being with other gardeners. I asked for photos and any snippets the group might want to share and sent out newsletters regularly by email. My Pilates teacher started Zoom exercise sessions, so why not see if the group could meet up using Zoom?

So now we Zoom conference weekly and share garden photos and gardening tips. Group members who were not at all technical have surprised themselves and become Zoom fans, it just goes to show! We continue to join together, we continue to learn, we still have fun. The U3A ethos survives and so do we.