Thanks to everyone who volunteers to work alongside the paid staff in the Botanical Gardens. For October they contributed well over 400 hours (the propagation team worked 138 hours and the garden volunteers 300 hours).

Thanks to Dr Maria Val Martin for her fascinating talk on Air Quality Gardens, including details of the one she helped create within the Botanical Gardens. It was splendid to have another lecture held in person in the Dorothy Fox Education Centre.

Thanks to landscape architect Zac Tudor for a fabulous talk after our AGM on the greening of Sheffield City Centre. It was a delight to hear about the environmental and aesthetic benefits of the various planting schemes and about how influential and admired they have become.

At our 2021 AGM we were delighted to award honorary membership to four Friends for their ‘distinguished services.’ Anne Martin and Bob Merryweather were recognised for their work as volunteers in the Gardens, and Rene May and Jill Sinclair for their contributions to the executive committee.

Our Annual General Meeting takes place this Friday (12th November) in the Dorothy Fox Education Centre in the Botanical Gardens, followed by a live lecture by Zac Tudor on ‘Urban Greening in Sheffield’ - giving an overview of the Grey to Green planting in Sheffield city centre.

Thanks to Emma, Fiona and Kate from Wessex Archaeology for a fascinating glimpse into the excavations at Coleshill Hall gardens and moat, uncovered as a result of the HS2 project. A recording of the lecture is available to view in the password-protected Friends Area of the website.

Join us for what promises to be a splendid online lecture on Tuesday (2 November), with three speakers from Wessex Archaeology on 'Plants, Pleasure and Power' - sharing the information and insights they have gleaned from excavating the moat and Elizabethan garden at Coleshill Hall.

We are saddened to share news of the death of our Chair, Jill Thompson. She passed away peacefully at St Luke’s Hospice during the night of 23 October.

Join us Tuesday lunchtime (28th October) for one of our public guided tours of the Gardens. For October our special focus will be on emerging Autumn leaf colour.

We have started cautiously trialling some live events in the Dorothy Fox Education Centre. The first face-to-face lecture we have hosted for 18 months was for Heritage Open Days in September.

Thanks to Dr Sylvia Travers for a great online lecture on the building of RHS Bridgewater. A recording of the lecture is now available in the password-protected Friends Area of the website, and includes images of the design plans for the vast walled garden and photos of how the designs have turned out.

The October edition of our regular newsletter News Shoots is now available to view in the password-protected Friends Area of the website. It has information on upcoming events (online and increasingly in person), a new plant recycling scheme, our plant of the month, and news of a change in leadership for the Friends.

Join us for our next online talk on Tuesday 19th October with Dr Sylvia Travers, on ‘The building of Bridgewater: breathing new life into old walls’. Sylvia is Team Leader for the Inner Walled Garden at RHS Bridgewater.

We’re delighted to report that the pavilions in the Gardens reopened on 5 October, after being closed more-or-less throughout the pandemic.

The recording of this week’s lecture on bulbs for year-round colour is now available to view in the password-protected Friends Area of the website.