Seasons Greetings and a warm welcome from your new EGC chair Jane Murphy.

My name is Jane Murphy and I have the privilege of being elected Chair of the Exmouth Garden Club at the AGM in November. Mike Wheeler (who has been chair for the last 9 years) will be a hard act to follow. He has a great deal of knowledge of gardening and plants. I want to take this opportunity to thank Mike for all his hard work for the Garden Club and wish him well in his move to the South East to be closer to family.

I would also like to thank these members of the ECG appointed or re-elected to the ECG Committee at the AGM. Martin White agreed to continue to be Treasurer and his wife Heather will continue with the plant sales. My husband, Bob Mogford as Acting Secretary for the Garden Club and other committee members: Jill Fry, Linda Smyth and Mavis Mills. Your volunteering to help the club is much appreciated.

Let me introduce myself and Bob. Although Bob is a Devonian, we had for many years been living in North London with a reasonable sized garden (for London) where I grew a variety of fruit, vegetables and flowers.

We moved to Exmouth last June, and have been enjoying restoring a previously neglected garden.

I would like to get to know you all more and make the Garden Club more representative of members and their interests. I hope to share a short questionnaire at our next meeting in January. I would love to hear any of your suggestions on how the Garden Club is run, and especially on anything you particularly enjoy about it and would ideally like to see more of.

Members suggestions made at the AGM

Providing refreshments at the beginning of the meeting. I will suggest to the committee that we implement this for our next meeting.

Investing in a PA system. This will ensure that everyone is able to hear the speakers talk. The Committee will look into this and report back to members.

We have had an offer to help with the Garden Club website and social media, to begin in the new year.

These will be discussed at the next Committee meeting.

None of our next quarters speakers will be bringing plants so have a look round your garden to see if you have things you could bring to the club plant table.