Ashton Hayes and Tarvin Flower Club. "Travels in the Fun Bus" by Ruth Rees

Our demonstrator on May 13th, travelling from Chirk, was held up at the Wrexham roundabout road works so we altered our normal format and members and visitors had tea/biscuits before the demonstration.

The fun bus of the travels was a motorhome, acquired at retirement in order to visit some of the places where Ruth's husband had done a 3month cycle challenge 5 years earlier. For this he used an orange coloured bicycle so her 1st design used orange roses and gerbera with a bike wheel.

After some trial runs in this country the 1st six month trip was planned and they departed in September to avoid the British winter. The 2nd design was influenced by the Beaujolais area and comprised 3 small arrangements in deep red and purple, including deep purple
lilac to look like bunches of grapes. We heard about some close shaves with low bridges and narrow tracks.

By design 3 we had reached San Tropez which was depicted in bright, almost clashing colours of deep pink, yellow, purple and red.

Our next stop on the journey was when we reached Spain and this design had lots of peach and some pale lilac to show the bleached tones and silver sands of those sunny climes.
When they moved into Portugal the vigour of the Atlantic dominated and the flowers were in blues, purples and white in a continental parallel design

Ruth's final design was inspired by the pilgrimage town of Santiago de Compostela and was a very large and showy arrangement but all in white and green.

The varied colours of the designs and the use of wonderful garden material stood out in what was an evening of holiday reminders for many of us.

Our June meeting will be a visit to Sue Makin's garden at Clemley House in Duddon. If you
haven't put your name down and wish to go please give Joyce a call on 740855