Upcoming BGS Events at a glance
Contact Details:
Kathryn Gardner & Suzanne Snowden: breamgardeningsociety@gmail.com
Diana Standing: bgsprogsec@gmail.com
John Theophilus: secretarybgs100@gmail.com
| Date & Time | Where | What – who to contact |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday 10 November 7:30 – 9:30pm | Bream Sports Club | Monthly Meeting: Biodynamic Principles for Gardeners – Mark Moodie Diana Standing |
| Saturday 28 November 2:00-4:00pm | Cheryl H-H’s house, Milkwall | BGS Volunteers’ Party Kathryn Gardner |
| Tuesday 8 December 7:30 – 10:00pm | St James’ Church Centre, Bream | BGS Christmas Quiz with Bring & Share Supper Diana Standing |
| Tuesday 12 January 7:30 – 9:30pm | Bream Sports Club | Review of 2027 Kathryn Gardner |
| Tuesday 9 February 7:00 – 7:30pm | Bream Sports Club | BGS AGM John Theophilus |
| Tuesday 9 February 7:30 – 9:30pm | Bream Sports Club | Olives and Olive oil: Flavour & growing conditions. Growing a usable crop in the UK. – Fernando Lozano John Theophilus |
Editorial
In this newsletter we have a review of the Autumn show (spoiler alert – it was fab!) and a little glance ahead into early 2027 to bring news of our plans to make the AGM a bit less of a marathon.
Also news of our plans to run an ongoing assessment of our gardening experiences in the year, especially how we are coping with global warming, for review in November 2027.
Finally we need to alert you that a small purse was found at the Autumn Show. Nothing in it to identify the owner. If it is yours, please contact me (secretarybgs100@gmail.com) with a description of purse and contents.
John Theo
Jane’s Jottings
Hi All,
Well we have proper cold weather coming towards the end of the week ~ it seems we’ve hardly had any autumn, just summer and then a hiccup of wonderful colour then 0 degs for Thurs night ~ lots of lovely parasol mushrooms though ~ yum!
I still have bulbs and seeds to plant, a bit late but they should be fine:
Garlic ~ I can’t grow this but now’s the time to plant
Broad Beans & Peas (smooth, winter-hardy) ~ I’ll sow mine indoors so the mice don’t get them and pop them, potted up, in the greenhouse once they’re up
Greens ~ sowing land cress, coriander, corn salad in the greenhouse once I’ve cleared the beds
Chard ~ I have 5 chard I sowed a while back which I’ll plant out in the greenhouse beds
Daffs & Crocus ~ bit late but they’ll be fine, they’ll just come up a bit later
Tulips ~ just the right time for tulips
I’m leaving a lot of plant seed heads up and areas of long grass for over-wintering critters, but I’m clearing the veg beds bit by bit now and top-dressing for next year. I grew 2 squash in a dustbin full of not-so-well rotted compost so that will get used plus 2 yr old compost from the bins ~ hopefully I won’t need to go hunting for well-rotted manure this year, not sure I have the energy…
Happy gardening ~ it may be getting cold, but enough woolley jumpers and a good warm hat means we can still enjoy being out there.
Jane 🙂
Upcoming events – details
BGS Monthly meeting – Tuesday 10 November
Biodynamic Principles for Gardeners
An introduction to the world of biodynamics by Biodynamic Association management team member Mark Moodie. Learn about how biodynamics places an emphasis on balanced soil fertility, plant health, nature’s diversity, and animal welfare as part of a combined whole. Mark will talk about the secrets of planting based on the phases of the moon and the benefits that he believes this brings.
Volunteers’ thank you party – Saturday 28 November
We are having a party to thank all the BGS volunteers who helped make the Summer and Autumn Shows so successful. We have sent invitation out to all the people who filled in the “Volunteers and Donations” forms, but are aware that others helped out but didn’t fill in a form. You are all welcome!
Please let Kathryn know if you are coming for catering purposes. Invitation – Volunteer Tea Party
Many thanks to Cheryl for kindly hosting this event.
Christmas Quiz and Bring & Share Supper – Tuesday 8 December
The highlight of the Christmas season – the BGS Bring & Share Supper and another opportunity to pit our wits against the fiendish Christmas quiz.
Always fun and friendly, highly recommended to our new members to get to know others in a relaxed setting. We will be sticking to our tried and tested format of booking St James’ church hall and everyone showing up with some delicious grub to share for a lovely party culminating in entertainments. Finishing with a fiendish quiz with a prize for the winning table.
If you haven’t been before I can highly recommend it. Booking form will be out soon.
Review of 2027 – Tuesday 12 January &
AGM – Tuesday 9 February
In previous annual general meetings of the Society, we have mixed together reports of our activities in the year with the fundamental business of approving accounts and electing our committee. The result has been a very long meeting with little in the way of discussion of what we are doing, culminating in an election which is pretty perfunctory.
In January 2027 we are going to repeat something which worked well after the Summer Show a few years ago. We will be presenting reports of activities from the year and combining this with small group discussions. We hope to get members’ opinions of what went well and less well, and ideas to make things better going forward.
We will then run a simple AGM in February, just doing the essential business required; followed by what we expect will be an interesting and entertaining talk by our local olive oil importer Fernando Lozano. Fernando will explain how varieties and growing conditions affect the flavours of olive oils, and his experiences growing olives and caper berries as crops in the UK, where global warming is making this a feasible reality.
This will, of course, be illustrated by opportunities to taste a number of single variety extra virgin olive oils, which have a remarkable range of flavours.
Autumn Show 2026
Thank you to everyone who helped to make the Autumn Show a great success once again – as a volunteer, exhibitor and/ or visitor.
Congratulations to the class winners, the cup winners and all of the other exhibitors who helped to create such a fantastic spectacle overall. The number of exhibits increased once again, to 561 across the 7 sections of our show and the DFBK Honey Show.
Many of our judges thought that it was our best Autumn Show so far and complimented everyone who entered for creating such a wonderful display. Congratulations in particular go to Julie Cockle who was awarded a National Honey Show Certificate of Merit for her soft set honey. This is the highest award possible for an entry into a honey show with fewer than 100 entries! A full list of cup winners is available on our website Bream Autumn Show – Bream Gardening Society and a selection of photographs and other results from the show will be added later this week.
Thanks also to the many very generous people who donated cakes, plants and prizes to the Show. Many of the donation offers arrived only a few days before the Show (which was slightly nerve-wracking!) but, in the end, we had a fabulous selection. A special thank you must go to Theresa Howley who donated so many beautiful plants to the plant stall, provided the vases of flowers which decorated the tables in the tearoom and the homemade soup to feed the judges.
We were so pleased to see some new faces amongst the volunteers this Autumn, not least Martin Thompson. After displaying all of his frankly amazing vegetables, Martin put in a sterling effort as a volunteer too. So many people went the ‘extra mile’ to make the day such a great success – far too many to mention you all by name, and so we will be holding a tea party at the end of the month to say thank you. Full details above.
As always, there are many things that could be improved regarding the organisation of the show, and we have already started thinking about changes ahead of next year’s edition. If you have any suggestions, please send an email to breamgardeningsociety@gmail.com or, better still, bring them along to the review meeting in January. Next year, we would like to publish a full class list for the handicraft and photography sections, for both the Summer and Autumn Shows, at the AGM in February. So, if you have any ideas for classes that you would like to be considered for inclusion please let us know soon.
Finally, we want to collect any photographs that you took of the Show for our records and to make it easier to set up next year. If you have any you wish to contribute, please contact John at secretarybgs100@gmail.com and he will provide a link to a folder where you can upload them.
Thanks again for all your support and we look forward to working with you all again next year.
Kathryn
BGS Products for Sale
Our 2026 Apple Juice and 2027 Calendar were both well received at the Autumn Show and sold well.
For anyone who hasn’t spotted our 2027 calendar, here is a link to an online copy so you can see what it looks like. BGS 2027 calendar
The real thing is, of course, glossy and gorgeous (with a hole to hang it from).
We will be offering both for sale at the General meeting on 10 November and at the Bring and Share supper on 8 December.
Alternatively, members can order directly via these forms:
BGS Calendar 2027 – order form.
BGS calendar competition 2027/8
We are all very pleased with the way the calendar has turned out and has decided that we should run another competition to produce a similar calendar for 2028. There will be an article in the Members Section of our web site detailing the rules and other details (as soon as I have written it!). In the mean time…
Following our experiences with this year’s competition, we are going to be much more stringent with photographic entries. We will only accept photographs which have been taken in, or cropped down to, landscape format. Also, if you are entering a photograph which you have edited or cropped, please hang onto the original photograph file. We discovered that many of the photographs entered this year were of much too low resolution to be suitable for printing.
A photo taken on a phone in it’s original file format has ample resolution for quality printing, so there is no need for any special equipment to enter. The snag is that when you edit or crop a photo using your phone, the resulting image can be severely downgraded.
If you want to edit your photo, please first make a copy and save the original. Then make the copy look exactly as you wish, and submit it to the competition. Please submit your original image together with your edited image. Then, should you be selected, we can reproduce your image without loss of resolution, using a professional editing suite.
Please note that in submitting your entry you will be deemed to have given us permission to publish it and/or adjust it to fit the calendar format.
Last year’s subject was “Gardens, flowers and wildlife” and, as you can see from the calendar, you produced some pretty fabulous photos.
We think we’d like to focus more on cultivated gardens this year (us being a gardening society, and all…) so we have chosen the subject “Gardens: plants, ornaments & structures”. We are looking for interesting pictures of gardens, featuring any or all of the sub-topics. Please note photographs do not have to be of YOUR garden – they could be of any garden that you admire and/or has inspired you to photograph.
Now you’ve all ‘got your eye in’, we’re anticipating an even more exceptional crop of photographs for next year. Please remember that we’ll need nice photographs of gardens in the winter for the months of November – February. Best get out and snapping! Will you get the front cover for 2028?
Please let me know by email to secretarybgs100@gmail.com when you have photographs you would like to enter. I will send you a link to a folder on my G-drive where you can upload them. That way there will be no need for emailing large media files.
Volunteers wanted
We have been asked whether any of our members would be prepared to join an ongoing volunteer work force to keep the courtyard garden of the West Dean Centre tidy and pleasant.
It is not anticipated that this will be an onerous activity, just a bit of TLC here and there. Please can anyone who feels inclined to help contact me on secretarybgs100@gmail.com. Thank you.
Replacement raised bed and fencing screen of BGS containers
We have received a grant to replace the temporary raised bed constructed at the Sports Club about 2 years ago with a more permanent structure, constructed from sweet chestnut sleepers. As part of the same grant, we have now got funding to build screening trellis fencing for our containers.
Both projects will be proceeding over the winter in time to have the raised bed replanted with bulbs and Spring flowers for a nice show next year. Jane is considering the options for clematis and similar for the fencing. It will look glorious!
We may need volunteers to help with either or both projects and you may be sure we will be letting you know if we do.
Members’ gardening experience in 2027
On the 2nd of November 2027, in partnership with Yorkley Community Garden, we will give a visual presentation on Gardening in Climate Change, FOREST OF DEAN.
To do this, we are asking all growers and gardeners to answer some questions in a survey covering your experiences over this year and next. We will be asking about things that grew well and those that didn’t. How you managed and what you might change, etc. Photos will be helpful.
The survey is being put together at present and will be out for completion soon.
Other Organisations’ Events
| Date & start time | Where | Who/What/Details & Links |
| Monday 9 November 7:15pm | Lydney Town Hall | Lydney & Sevenside Flower Club. “Quintessentially Christmas” – Sionedd Hughes |
Saturday 14 November 10:00am | St James’ Church Centre, Bream | Christmas craft fair & coffee morning Christmas Craft Fair |
| Sunday 15 November 2:00pm | Yorkley Community Centre | “Trees in Our Forest”. Presented by Forestry England and Dr Gabriel Hemery. |
| Monday 16 November 7:15pm | Bream Sports Club | Bream Sports Club EGM |
| Friday 4 December evening | Bream Sports Club | Christmas lights switch on event. |
Quintessentially Christmas – Monday 9 November
Flower arranging tips for Christmas decorations. £15 on the door.
Christmas craft fair & coffee morning – Saturday 14 November
We will be having a stall at the Christmas Craft Fair at St James’ which is being organised by Julie Holder’s non-profit “Packed with Love”. It is raising money for a good cause (to fill 80 treat and toiletry bags to give to people experiencing homelessness this Christmas), so please support it if you have the time.
We would love some volunteer members to help us run the stall. Please don’t worry if you haven’t volunteered to run our stall before, there will always be a more experienced BGS member on hand to help you. Just helping for an hour or so makes a difference and spreads the load.
Trees in Our Forest – Sunday 15 November
This “Our Forest Forum” event will address the range of issues affecting Trees in Our Forest, from the initial selection of species that will cope with climate change, through the lifecycle of a tree from planting to harvesting whilst combating various pests and diseases.
Presentations will be by Forestry England staff and a guest speaker, Dr Gabriel Hemery, on ‘Reimagining a Wood Culture’.
Bream Sports Club EGM – Monday 16 November
Many of our members are also members of the Bream Sports Club.
Given that the Sports Club supports BGS in many and varied ways, they might like to attend this important Sports Club EGM, next Monday at 7:15 pm.
Christmas Lights Switch On – Friday 4 December
It is intention to have a glorious Christmas Lights switch on event at the Sports Club on the evening of 4 December. We will have a stall there and will be grateful for BGS volunteer helpers. Please contact Kathryn on breamgardeningsociety@gmail.com if you are able to assist.
Offers and Wants
‘Dalek’ compost bin
A member in Bream has a compost bin surplus to requirements. If anyone is interested please contact me on Secretarybgs100@gmail.com and I’ll put you in touch.