Southport u3a share their gardening know-how

Diane from Southport u3a talks about a recent talk their Gardening Group gave to Upholland u3a - and how it proved the benefits of u3a members sharing their skills with one another

In 2022, Southport u3a Gardening Group created a show garden for Southport u3a Flower Show. Amazingly, we won a Gold medal and a silver cup for our efforts. Alongside the garden we had a gazebo advertising and promoting the u3a, providing information leaflets and membership applications.

It was a marvellous experience meeting so many lovely people from other groups, swapping ideas and advice, and it certainly swelled our membership with lots of new faces, some that previously hadn’t known the u3a existed.

After the show another North West gardening group from Upholland u3a, asked Lisa and I if we would do a talk for them on the creation of our garden. Many of their members had visited the show & enjoyed our garden. The visitors book from the show was full of lovely comments by the Upholland members so it seemed a pretty safe bet.

With great enthusiasm we put together a step by step, ‘warts and all’ journey. So many members had been involved and worked very hard. It was a lovely trip down memory lane now that we had recovered from all that effort. Luckily the process had been well documented with lots of pics from day one so a Power Point presentation packed with images was assembled to accompany the talk.

Not being seasoned public speakers, it was with huge trepidation on a wet and windy day in February that we set off for the meeting. Armed with our Silver Challenge Cup, awards and laptop we set up to entertain Upholland u3a's Gardening Group. Group Leader Phyllis and all the members were very welcoming and apparently really enjoyed our efforts.

There were lots of questions and many compliments about the garden. Pictures of Upholland members that had visited the show were included in the presentation and they were delighted and tickled pink to see themselves up on the screen. We even managed to find a marvellous speaker for our own Southport u3a Gardening Group.

It was a most enjoyable morning, not too scary, lots of fun and very interesting to see how other groups work. But best of all, being u3a members, we did it for free!

The u3a is a fantastic organisation, and networking between the many groups is fun, informative and a reservoir of know-how and experiences.