Friends can look forward to a copy of The Review arriving in the post this week, along with your membership card for 2020/21. The Review is the new name for our long-standing newsletter, and reflects its intended shift to a weightier publication with longer articles.

The new website for the Friends of the Botanical Gardens, Sheffield went live in late November 2020. It means people can now subscribe to become a Friend online for the first time.

A highly unusual fungus has been spotted in the pavilions. The basket fungus Ileodictyon cibarium is growing in the New Zealand section (to the rear of the furrow, sadly, so not visible from the windows).

Thanks to all the Friends who attended our first-ever online AGM! Over fifty people joined us by Zoom on 10 November and around twenty voted beforehand by email or phone call.

You can help the Gardens be recognised as one of the nation’s favourite parks and gardens by voting in the Green Flag People’s Choice awards.

Lovers of the beautiful collection of trees in the Botanical Gardens will soon be able to follow a digital tour, which will take visitors on a trail of some of the finest specimens.

The Gardens are open winter hours throughout the country’s second lockdown in November. So they are available to all from 8am weekdays (10am weekends) until 4pm every day.

Volunteers have been clearing and replanting the woodland garden under the shade of the alder tree at the end of the prairie.

This Autumn has been an excellent one for mushrooms and toadstools. We have had sightings of the unusual magpie inkcap (Coprinopsis picacea) in the Long Border, near the Evolution Garden.

Our last Pop-Up Plant Sale of the year will will be on Sunday, 13th September, 2-4pm at 4 Park Lane, S10 2DU, home of our chair Jill Thompson.