Articles Written By Members and Associates

BPFS (1981 – 2001) - A Brief History

Born in September 1981, a few people that already had the "fuchsia bug" called an inaugural meeting. On a wet and windy night over 100 folk turned up at Kinson Community Centre and 92 members signed up that night. Many of the originals have sadly moved on or passed away. However we still have a nucleus of the founders with us, some holding office. Lorna Swinbank, President, Chris Garret, Vice President, Joyce Adey, Vice President, and Derek Luther, Chairman and southern BFS Representative.

Our first meetings were held in a Church hall in Wallisdown and the first show in a church hall in Ashley Road, Parkstone, which we shared with the local Carnation Society.

However we soon outgrew these places and moved to our present venues.

Our monthly meetings are held at Fourways Day Centre, Constitution Road, Poole. On the second Wednesday of every month, where we average 50 members and guests at each meeting.

We have regular speakers of note, often travelling some distance, from Yorkshire, Lancashire, Scotland, and all around the country. We also have evenings taken by our own local experts on all aspects of Fuchsia culture.

We manage to maintain a high average membership (around 90) and we are always managing to attract new growers. These new growers are encouraged to attend our beginners’ classes, where we try to firstly teach the fundamentals of fuchsia culture and then to encourage the showing side.

This brings us to our "show". The last weekend in July we hold a "2 day show". This is a huge venture every year; we take over the Kinson Community Centre, which has 2 halls, and we erect a large marquee at the back, which we manage to fill with fuchsias, trade stands craft stalls and of course we have an excellent reputation for our catering.

This year we had 47 classes and over 280 exhibits. Pretty good when you consider the weather 2 weeks prior, and the temperature of around 80f over the weekend of the show.

We have an enviable reputation for our plant sales on show weekend, and our information desk, which is manned by one of our more successful growers.

We have a busy showing and social year. Several of our members show at the nationals, mainly the Southern, but also London and the South West at Swindon.

During the last 3 years we have been quite successful with our inter-society display. We do other displays and plant sales at the height of the growing season, and we put on a display every month at the community centre coffee mornings which are quite well attended.

During the year we have all manner of social events. Trips to nurseries for the plant hunters, short mat bowling, skittles bingo, garden parties on different themes and we try to have an annual Christmas dinner and dance, although this has been known to take place in January.

In November 1996 we "went on line" when Jon Mitcham, one of our Knowledgeable members, started our own web site. While we may not have been the first, we were certainly one of the earliest of the societies to do this, and we now have a site to be proud of and have been told we have one of the better sites with a steady 1000 plus hits a month. We have found friends all over the world: Africa, Australia, Canada, USA, Japan, and lots of Europe.

We have our pet charity. "Poole Hospital NHS (Cancer)Trust. There is a class in our show in which the public are invited to judge by placing money in the individual collecting boxes, - the winner is the one with the most money, and all the money is given to the trust.

At the 2001 show one of the charity class plants was raffled: "Blood Donor" raised an extra £50.50 for the fund.

The 2001 season included the achievement of our main goal, we managed to win the "Inter society 6’x6’ Display " class at the London Show. Thus putting a new name on the shield. The theme was our 20^th Anniversary.

MJ (Member)