5th January 2017

Annual General Meeting

2016 was a very happy year for our club as we celebrated our 40th anniversary.   We saw some excellent demonstrations, most with very appropriate celebratory themes.   The two main highlights were our Ruby Anniversary dinner in July with an after-dinner demonstration entitled “Ruby Thursday” and our grand finale in December when Doug Howard wowed us with “Sparkling Christmas Memories”.   We also had another highlight during the year, which was the setting up of our club website – www.clophillflowerclub.com.   Here you can see details of our programme for the year, together with reports and pictures of our monthly demonstrations. There is also information and illustrations under the separate heading “Celebration Flowers” showing some of our past designs for weddings and parties.   
 
Our club is part of the Home Counties Area which covers Bedfordshire, parts of Hertfordshire and Essex and in October an Area Show and Competition was held at Hatfield House.   Several of our club members entered different classes and had very satisfactory results – to the point where our club entry, produced by two of our ladies, was runner up to Best in Show.   Our charity for the year was Childhood Leukaemia and we are pleased to be able to send them £750.00 raised during the year by our club charity table as well as our plant stall in May and our super Flower Festival celebrating the life of HM Queen Elizabeth II  in September, both held in conjunction with St. Mary’s Church in 2016.
 
2017 already looks to be a busy year.   We have four weddings booked, together with 20 table arrangements to design and create for the MacMillan Nurses’ Ball in May on a theme of “Gin and Tonic”.   That will set the brain cells working overtime, but it’s all good fun and for a worthwhile cause too.   In fact everything we do at our club is enjoyable, either to watch or participate.   Our next meeting is on 2nd February when Sarah Long starts our flowery year with “Spring has Sprung”, followed on 2nd March by Barbara Collins with “Oriental Moments”.  We look forward to seeing you.