Our first meeting for 2026 at Patina Gallery was off to a very damp start with 100mm of rain bucketing down, but enough members made it to enable the meeting to go ahead.

It was our pleasure to welcome Claire Diprose, Local Landcare Co-ordinator, as our guest speaker. She detailed a couple of Landcare events coming up that would be of interest to Grenfell’s gardeners.

To celebrate National Eucalyptus Day, Weddin Community Native Nursery and our own local artist and keen gardener, Kathleen McCue, are holding a Eucalypt Art Workshop on Sunday, 22 March, where you can create your own eucalypt masterpiece using pencils, crayons or acrylics.

On Thursday, 30 April, there will be an Edible Garden Trail - more details to be forthcoming, but that certainly got our interest. Weddin Landcare, of course, are running other projects and events of interest specifically to farmers and landholders and more information on these events is available through their office.

We would like to thank Claire for taking the time to come through rain and flood to talk to us.

Our meeting focussed on our first major fundraiser, our Mother’s Day Biggest Afternoon Tea, specifically to decide on a venue and a theme. Members are following through a couple of suggestions, and we will be making a decision next meeting.

As an adjunct to that event, we are holding our street stall on Friday, 24 April.

This year we will again be holding Best Blooms or interesting garden item at our monthly meetings, where members bring along their current best flower, bush or something else of interest from their garden to admire or discuss.

We are also looking at organizing the occasional trip to an interesting garden or park, and also to invite guest speakers to share their knowledge on topics of interest to our gardeners.

Our next meeting is on Tuesday, 7 April, at 2 pm at Wendy Johnson’s home, at 85 Berrys Road. All gardeners and those interested in gardeners are welcome.