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Tips For a Bountiful Garden; with Toby Buckland, gardener, author and presenter on BBC2’s Gardeners World. TICKETED EVENT.
Performed in Victorian Mourning dress we explore Warwick Castle and Calke Abbey’s “not so living history”.
The secrets that lie beneath and the inhabitants that still occupy the rooms, corridors and grounds of two very different Stately Homes as witnessed by myself, colleagues and guests.
A Hardy Planters Winter Survival Kit; with Don Whitton, National Collection Holder of Hardy Euphorbia. Sales at this meeting

Much of Melbourne’s history can be told by the story of individual houses in the parish and their occupants. This talk by Melbourne History Group Chairman Philip Heath, given on Saturday, 16 November, at 7:30 pm at Melbourne Assembly Rooms Main, selects twelve of the most interesting ones to prove the point.
Admission is £4 (Under 16s free if accompanied by an adult). Refreshments will be available.
MEMBERS CHRISTMAS SOCIAL
A Prize Quiz & Festive Supper; For Ticknall Garden Club members and their guests.
The Pigeon – from the gods to the gutter. Dove of peace or rat with wings? A look at our perceptions and complex relationship with this remarkable bird throughout history.
This is a change of topic. The talk will be “Arming a Knight.” Jed Jaggard will give us a fascinating insight into how armour developed through the ages, with lots of artifacts and objects to see and handle.
The Salvation Army – Danny Wells.
Catherine Booth was fortified with the spirit and convictions of early 19th-century rural Methodism of the Midlands. Having met a kindred spirit in William Booth of Nottingham, they were to take their pre-industrial Methodist creed into the religious and political fulcrum of the East End of London in the second half of the century.
The response of the Booths to the poverty, hunger, squalor and ‘sin’ that they observed all around them, was to create the Salvation Army as a ‘Way out of Darkest England’.
It became the fastest-growing religious movement of late Victorian Britain and is still a religious and social service agency of international importance today.

Labour of Love: The Orton & Spooner Story
These days, there are not that many companies in the fairground game that manufacture rides and shows—and those that do are not exactly household names. But one company is just as famous now as it was in its heyday, in the first half of last century.
On 29 April, Elaine Pritchard offers her presentation on the local, world-renowned fairground company.
Planting Pots For Winter Interest & Spring Joy; with Harriet Rycroft, Ex-Head Gardener at Whichford Pottery, now a free range gardener, speaker & writer.

‘Totally out of control” would be a perfectly reasonable description of The Dower House garden in Melbourne this coming May when, on 17th and 18th May, the garden is next open for the National Garden Scheme. ‘No mow May’ will be in its stride in parts of the garden; the leafy growth of spring bulbs now over, will be peeking over the now long grass in the orchard, cow parsley will be throwing wide their fern-like leaves and frothy white flowers in the woodland. A few months ago, we thought we had control of the garden, but nature so quickly puts any complacency we might have had back in its box. But it doesn’t matter – the garden is so bursting with energy in this season that it cannot help but transfer some of that excitement to us all.
Annual Plant Sale – Doors open at 10am

‘Totally out of control” would be a perfectly reasonable description of The Dower House garden in Melbourne this coming May when, on 17th and 18th May, the garden is next open for the National Garden Scheme. ‘No mow May’ will be in its stride in parts of the garden; the leafy growth of spring bulbs now over, will be peeking over the now long grass in the orchard, cow parsley will be throwing wide their fern-like leaves and frothy white flowers in the woodland. A few months ago, we thought we had control of the garden, but nature so quickly puts any complacency we might have had back in its box. But it doesn’t matter – the garden is so bursting with energy in this season that it cannot help but transfer some of that excitement to us all.
Pop up Takeaway Breakfast Baps in the Village Hall car park provided by the Staff of Life. Proceeds to the Ticknall Village Hall.
Alan Hiley – Ashby to Burton Light Railway – A short history A journey in photos along the old tramway route to see how it looked then and how it looks now. The tramway opened in 1906 and the journey was was from the Town Hall in Burton-upon-Trent and journeyed through Swadlincote to Ashby-de-la-Zouch.