Our lecture organiser has been busy booking more speakers for our Zoom lectures for the first part of 2021.

We’re delighted to be welcoming multi-award-winning garden designer, Jo Thompson…

The December edition of our monthly newsletter News Shoots has been distributed to Friends by email, and is also available in the password-protected Friends Area of the website.

For National Tree Week we’ve launched a new digital trail of some of the trees in the Gardens.

Our tree experts have selected some of the most beautiful and interesting specimens to view in a leisurely hour’s stroll, accompanied by an audio guide.

Volunteers Peter and Trish Kohn have filled one of the greenhouses in the Gardens with over a thousand of their seed-raised plants for safe-keeping over the winter. Most are from South Africa, representing almost 250 different species.

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.