PHOTO GALLERY
Salvage from the Garden for Christmas
(15 November 2006)
click on photo for larger image
In November 2006 Christine Banbury
of the Getty Estate came to talk to 
the SCG about Salvage from the
Garden for Christmas. The talk was held in Cookham at the WI Hall there,
which has proved a very pleasant venue once you have managed to find it.
One big advantage is that it has a large white wall for projecting slides
onto, although Christine's talk was actually hands on.
The first half of the evening Christine held a discussion with the audience on the effects of the dry summer and how people had dealt with hose pipe bans. There were comments that there had been fewer insects such as green fly and black fly due to the heat. Also people were starting to think about different ways of planning for the change in weather, although it did seem that summer 2006 had been a bit of a shock to everyone.
The
second part of the talk was about how things could be salvaged from the
garden for decorating the home for Christmas. Christine had some enormous,
dried allium heads, which looked wonderful in a vase sprayed in various
colours. She had also been
out to the hedgerows and picked Old Man's Beard still with the heads on,
she said the secret was to spray it with hairspray to stop it falling to
bits in transit and when being displayed, she had even made the strands
into wreaths. She had also collected bracken from the hedgerows and
sprayed it gold and then put it in an old vase. This gave a wonderful
effect. She changed the colours of the vases to a crimson red with paper
which made them look a lot more festive and set off the flower arrangement
beautifully. She had purchased some wonderful sprigs and garlands in
Germany which she
sold at the end and also metal rings for wreaths which she wound various
greenery around, such as pine,
holly and ivy. Again a spray of gold could really set them off. She had an
enormous pile of i
tems
that could be used for very little cost, dried leaves and twigs being
ideal for creating a Christmassy effect along with fir cones.
Her ideas were endless.
At the end she
offered some of the items she had purchased herself for sale and people
were able to chat to Christine while enjoying a cup of coffee or a glass
of wine. Everyone left all enthused with ideas for decorating their houses
for the Christmas break.