Plant Sale – our first Mediterranean Plant Sale took place on November 7th 2009 at Quinta  Fonte do Bispo  and  we had a wonderful response. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who volunteered to help or who supported us on the day.  The staff at the Quinta responded magnificently to the crowd of visitors.  The talks on ‘Grasses’ and on the ‘Soils and Fertilisers for the Algarve’ were very well attended and provoked good discussions afterwards. The first talk was on the subject of ‘Starting from Scratch’ and was given by experienced Algarve gardener, Burford Hurry. He held a roomful of people enraptured with his practical advice on how to tackle your first Algarve garden.

It was obvious that those attending were keen to learn more about gardening here and that short talks should be included in any future event. We believe that about 500 attended but it was difficult to tell as we were all kept very busy !  We are particularly grateful for the support from the nurseries who came along to sell plants and who were so generous with their advice and time for visitors on the day. Other exhibitors included an expert on Chillies, a Lavender expert from the UK, a bookstall and Almargem. I am particularly grateful to the kind folk who contributed their cleaned plant pots for recycling – very handy for mad keen propagators ! It was also good to have MGS members from all over Portugal attending, a group from the Beira led by Marion ter Horst were welcome and members from the Lisbon area also went home with a car full of plants.

Our own plant stall was very well supported and thanks are due to the hard working volunteers who gave up so much time to make this a great success. Thanks are also due for the many wonderful contributions of plants for sale, there are plans for a bigger and better stall next time so keep propagating – see the event planned for April 29th !

A ‘survivors lunch’ was held for helpers and it was agreed that we should aim to hold this event again this year – so keep the first week in November free ! We raised approximately €600 after expenses and this will be used to support talks and events on Mediterranean Gardening in the Algarve in the coming months.