JON Mason from Highfield Garden Centre gave an excellent talk on 'Lawn Care' to a good number of Club members at their March meeting.

He started by describing the development of the Garden Centre from selling purely gardening items to a much wider range of products, including clothing and gifts.

Modern shopping trends have demanded the diversification of garden centres in order to ensure enough custom - shoppers can spend hours browsing among a wide variety of interesting displays and often complete their visit with a cup of coffee or a meal at the cafe.

He then went on to describe the way to achieve the best possible results for our lawns, showing the available products and tools which he could recommend from personal experience.

Starting with repairing the ravages of winter weather and finishing with a good green lawn was made to sound quite simple though would involve a good deal of hard work.

He then presented a plant, a pack of fertiliser and a pair of spiked shoes to be raffle prizes, having mentioned that the spiked shoes, supposed to make it easy to aerate the lawn by walking over it, were probably one of the least effective items on sale!

He also offered for sale the products and plants which he had brought to show us.

An announcement was then made of two outings for Club members - in June to Hampton Court Gardens in Herefordshire and the other in September to the gardens at Tyntesfield.

The Club's next talk will be on the subject of pollination given by Dr Ferguson on Monday, April 14 (earlier than usual due to Easter).