Autumn Winter Programme 2025-26

SOG’S AUTUMN/WINTER PROGRAMME

2025-2026

 Meetings will be held on the 1^st Wednesday of the month in The Bradbury Room, Drapers Place, Horsefair, Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury SY2 6BP unless otherwise stated.

7.00pm Start Time

5th November - Shropshire Good Food Partnership and Schools Food Web    Emma Cantillion (Co-director at Shropshire Good Food Partnership and Project Coordinator for Schools Food Web)

Emma's invitation - “Join me for a hands-on session at the Shropshire Organic Gardeners AGM as I share the Shropshire Good Food Partnership’s year-long journey of decarbonising schools through the food system. Over the past year, we’ve collaborated with 20 schools across Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, creating roadmaps for cooking, growing, composting, and reducing food waste. We’ll share how we integrated these topics into the curriculum through CPD training, seed-saving lessons, and our exciting “Can You Taste the Difference?” citizen science project. During the session, we will have a hands on demo of how students are blind taste-testing produce and using refractometers to measure nutritional density”.

3rd December - Christmas Bring and Share and our Big Seed and Garden Paraphernalia Swap - Christmas Quiz/Competition

7th January (online Zoom meeting) - Gardeners' Question Time   

Since our first Gardeners’ Question Time via Zoom back in November 2020, a few members have requested a repeat, so at long last, we have GQT coming back to your (computer) screens to get 2026 off to a flying start. 51 On the panel will be Sue Stickland, Peter Anderson, Rachel Strivens and Sue Bosson. You can start sending in any questions you have to your Chairwoman, including snippets of video if needed ready for the session. 

 4th February - Final details for Potato Day followed by: What really is regenerative agriculture and why is it growing in popularity    Clare Hill from Planton Farm   

Saturday 7th February  - 22nd Potato Day - Wattlesborough Village Hall 

4th March - Health and Herbs for the Spring Season   Helen Whitworth 

Helen Whitworth is an Herbalist working near Shrewsbury. She originally trained as a doctor and then worked as a GP in Shropshire for 28 years before retiring recently. She is a passionate organic gardener, does wild swimming and enjoys being in Nature. Re-training in Herbalism has allowed her to combine her love of healing with the use of natural remedies and she loves to share this joy.  This will be an interactive talk with plants passed round and tasting of herbal treatments. 

1st April - AGM   Plus: Speakers from each of the Growing Projects that SOGs have donated funds to in the last 12 months will give us updates on how they used the money.