It was great to see so many Friends at this morning’s Christmas Social, despite the necessary Covid precautions and the arrival of Storm Barra! Thanks to everyone involved in organising, and congrats to the team quiz winners.

Join us tomorrow (Tuesday 7th December) for our annual Christmas get-together for Friends. We’ll be supplying drinks and mince pies, team quizzes, a review of the year, the chance to buy our Christmas cards, and just an opportunity to catch up with Friends.

Thanks to Swallows and Damsons florist Anna Potter for naming the Gardens as one of her favourite places in a piece yesterday (4th December) in The Guardian.

Join us on Tuesday (30th November) for our last public Gardens tour of the year. We’ll be focusing on some of our wonderful tree collection as part of National Tree Week. No need to book. Just turn up.

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.