On Saturday 4th September Shep-perton Village Hall was buzzing with activity. The hall was full of beautiful flowers, home grown vegetables and fruit, home made baked goods and sparkly jars of home-made preserves, displayed for all to see. It was the annual Autumn Show of the Shepperton Horticultural Association, the first show since 2019. Members had only been given four weeks notice of the show, due to booking con-straints, but they rallied round magnificently by showing almost as many exhibits as pre covid shows. This year hasn’t been kind weatherwise to growers and gar-deners, what with a May with almost torren-tial rain, followed by an onslaught of slugs and snails feasting on our precious seedlings, and then the dreaded tomato blight. Despite the adverse conditions our members still man-aged to exhibit an impressive array of veggies and fruit including tomatoes, potatoes, beans, carrots, onions, squash, apples, pears and vari-ous berries. The most popular category in the bakery section by far was soda bread, attract-ing an impressive 11 entries. Other categories included flapjacks, frosted carrot cake and a decorated celebration cake to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the Association. My fa-vourite section by far was the autumn flowers, especially the dahlia and chrysanthemum ex-hibits. I just love the big showy flowers in their lovely autumn colours.
A surprise visitor this year was a steam en-gine, very reminiscent of Thomas the Tank Engine. The owner, one of our members, was only too keen to talk to visitors and answer questions. Some lucky visitors were even al-lowed to climb aboard to toot the whistle.
The show closed at 2pm and members helped to clear away, feeling happy to have been able to get together after such a long time. We look forward to our next show in 2022.
The Association is open to anyone in Shep-perton and the surrounding area with an inter-est in growing, baking or preserving. This year a new category of photography was add-ed for people who don’t grow but might just want to be involved in a pleasant community event. For further details of how to join visit our web site www.sheppertonha.co.uk or visit our Facebook page.