Conference

Our 2018 Conference on Saturday 12th May was a great success despite many problems up to and including the night before!.

Harry Jans kicked off by giving us an amazing tour round the world, showing is some of the lovely plants he'd found growing in the wild on his many travels. A really good taster for the talks to come.

Kit Strange (fresh from a month long lecture tour of western USA!) took us on a trip to Northern Spain in early spring to show how she and a colleague collected Narcissus specimens for the living and herbarium collections.

From Europe to Asia - our next slot was to have been a trip to Bhutan, but Martin Walsh was unable to get out of Dublin airport on the Friday evening, but amazingly Harry was able to give us a second talk. Not quite on Bhutan but his talk "Plant Hunting on the Roof of the World" did cover a region not too far away.

And finally to South America with Martin Sheader who gave us a new talk on Plant hunting in Patagonia's deep south. A fascinating place with an amazing flora.

Our very special thanks to all our speakers, especially Harry who was able to rescue the programme at literally the eleventh hour!

Also thanks to our two Nurseries - Jill Agg and Norman Stevens who both had a large and very tempting range of plants and bulbs for sale.

And thank you to our members who provided plants for our members plant stall, especially thanks to Tony who not only manned it continuously but provided the majority of plants. Many thanks to Barbara and Catherine for their artwork display and to David for his display of photos on the flowers of the Drakensberg.

And last, but certainly not least, thank you to everyone who helped in the preparation and on the day, The conference sub-committee (Robert, Tony, David & Liz) who have been planning this event for the past eighteen months. Thelma, Elsie, Jasmine, Steven, the two Liz's who helped with the catering, selling raffle tickets, registration etc, Jasmine for hospitality and all those who helped clear up at the end.

And of course thanks to the Weatherley Centre staff who interpreted my rather amateurish table and chair set up plan perfectly, so we could arrive at the venue early Saturday morning with all the furniture in the right place.

Hope that's everyone - my apologies if I've forgotten anyone!.