Beeches Green Friendship Circle

OUR Friendship Circle held its October meeting on the October 20, 2015.

Rosalind, our Chair Person, gave apologies for those unable to attend and mentioned that Ann Hart would like to retire from her position as Events Organiser, and asked would anyone like to volunteer to replace her.

We discussed Christmas and it was agreed that the meal in the hall last year had been a great success and that we would go ahead and organise similar for this Christmas.

We also discussed the Christmas Shoe Box appeal, organised by Samaritans Purse an International Relief Appeal, and those interested collected a box to fill to be issued to needy children around the world.

She then went on to introduce our speaker Mr Geoff King who had come to give us a talk about his life and love of gardening.

Geoff was born in 1946.

His grandfather had been a head gardener on a large estate and Geoff’s interest and love of gardening grew from time spent with him.

He decided to become a gardener and at 16 years of age was sent to give help on a small holding.

Small holdings had been formed to encourage people to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

From there he found work at a nursery and this involved day release at College.

He then went on to do two years at Pershore Horticultural College followed by a year in Holland before joining the Voluntary Services Overseas and going to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to work with trouble mixed race children.

During this time the Anglican Christian Organisation he worked for formed a colony and started a co-operative.

After a monsoon his health was not good and consequently he returned home to Pershore where he was a teacher for two years.

He was then head hunted by Uni-Royal to work in their research department.

They were working on a number of projects including ways to make smaller fruit trees and also seed dressings for cereals.

He worked there for four and a half years and while there he met his future wife.

Geoff and his wife decided to leave Uni-Royal as they felt it was time to start a family and a job had become available with a Christian Project at Shipton Oliffe.

Geoff worked for six years on a three acre garden but unfortunately the project ran into financial difficulties and he was made redundant.

He retained his job for one day a week and became self employed working in various gardens of large houses in the area.

Eventually they moved to Butterrow in Stroud where for two days a week he worked at Lypiatt Manor for Lynn Chadwick who was a great lover of plants.

He worked there for 25 years and when he left he was very privileged to receive a sculpture from him as a leaving gift.

Geoff retired at sixty-two, sold his house and has now downsized, but still enjoys gardening, taking care to kneel rather than bend as he suffers with his back due to all his years gardening.

The talk was followed with a small film he had produced showing us some of the beautiful gardens he had worked in over the years.

The film was accompanied by poetry readings.

The members of our group found the talk extremely interesting and thanked Geoff for giving us an insight into his life.

Rosalind then thanked Geoff and reminded us that the next meeting would be on Tuesday, November 17 and the speaker would be Dr Roy Lamb from the Stroud Hospital League of Friends.