Newsletter: February 2005
SOUTH AUSTRALIAN IRIS SOCIETY Inc.
South Australian Iris Society
Minutes AGM February 10th 2005
Meeting opened 7.46pm
President Julia Jacobs welcomed new members Nancy Kopunic, Aldyth and Colin Rich
Apologies: Pat Toolan, Doreen Churchill, Belinda and Karl Meredith, Sandra Westbrook, Jenni Kempe, Nell Tanner.
Minutes from 2004 AGM: passed as being a true record Moved Natalie Houba seconded Gwen Alexandrou carried
Treasurer’s Report:
Membership: Membership joining fee is to remain the same being $20.00 Family, $15.00 Single and $5.00 Child. Move Ronda Burg seconded John Turner carried.
President’s Report:
After a slightly rocky start to 2004 our Society has developed into a happy and strong united body of members who have worked closely together to achieve a considerable amount in the year.
We have promoted ourselves to other Garden Clubs are continuing to do this to encourage more members to grow and enjoy the beauty of Iris and to entice people to become members. We planted Bearded Iris in conjunction with the Adelaide City Council gardeners. These beds were planted in colour groupings. We planted Bearded Iris again in various business, council, and community gardens each side of the main street of Hahndorf. These are looking wonderful and will look beautiful for this year’s bus trip there. Thank you to all members who donated Rhizomes for these projects and for the help planting them. We ran a successful judges school with Helen Reid and our appreciation goes to her for giving up her time and expertise. From this we now have 10 people who have achieved their judge’s certificates. Congratulations go to Ann Head, Marg Kuchel, John Turner, Jenny Kempe, Pam Hilton, John Pongrac, Belinda Meredith, Colleen Modra, Pat Toolan and myself.
Carol and Ivar Schmidt relinquished the Dykes Medal Garden in 2004 due to work commitments so the society took up the offer from Colleen and Les Modra. We are now looking forward to both trial Gardens being established at Colleen and Les Modra’s Impressive Iris Gardens. They are now ready to accept Rhizomes and we thank them both most sincerely for the offer. This will be much more convenient for members for working bees and judging.
Our 2005 convention committee have been working very hard organising the whole convention and show and we are very excited at what we have on offer to people attending. I would sincerely like to thank my very hard working and dedicated committee of Gwen Alexandrou, Natalie Houba, Marg Kuchel, Rosemary Turner Graham Kuchel, John Turner and now Pam Hilton. We still have a lot more to do this year to ensure the success of the convention with the help of all members of the society. My thanks go to the Executive Committee Ronda Burg, Marlene Gibson, Marg Kuchel, Sue Stribley, Betty Parsons and Nell Tanner. Thank you all for being very supportive to the Society and myself. My thanks also goes to the show committee who are again Ronda Burg, Marlene Gibson, Marg Kuchel, Jenny Kempe and Betty Parsons for their support and hard work in making the show a success.
I would like to thank Don Burg for his work and dedication of the club library and to Ronda with the help of Marlene for the successful trading tables held each month Thank you to you all.
Our annual Iris Show was supported extremely well by our members with quite a task for Ian Barry, our judge. I am thrilled to report that we have some very keen and quite new members who entered in both cuts and floral design sections, along with our usual exhibitors, it made it a wonderful show to present to the public.
We are most grateful to our sponsors and I have named them in the Year Book.
Congratulations to Members who won trophies. Everyone who entered is a winner in his or her own right for just entering.
We have had a very interesting selection of guest speakers this year. Those being Pauline and Neil Smith with a lovely evening on their trip to Japan. Thank you both.
To Sandra Westbrook who showed us her DVD on the Chelsea Flower Show and took us through her visit to Chelsea. This was most enjoyable especially the blue stand with a lot of Iris included. Thankyou Sandra
Colleen took us to the USA with slides of some very beautiful Blooms of Iris and we are fortunate to have this continue this evening. Thank you Colleen.
We had a very knowledgeable panel answering questions on all aspects of Iris growing. This was a very informative night. We had a night of practical club analysing on blooms and floral designs. This was an excellent refresher for the show.
David Barrington spoke on growing liliums and his breeding of Pacific Coast Iris. This was very informative meeting enjoyed by all. He and his wife Linda and his mother have two stunning gardens combined together at Bridgewater. This is on the bus tour visits. We had guest speakers from the Botanical Gardens and the Butterfly Conservation Society and Sophie Thompson spoke on gardening with less water.
Our Christmas meeting was a combined lunch at the home of Sue and Geoff Stribley. This is an outstanding garden and is certainly on the bus tour for the convention. We thank both Sue and Geoff most sincerely for welcoming us and certainly as they had a lot of work they did at the last because of an unwelcome flood through their garden a couple days prior.
We presented Darelle Watson with her life membership. She has been very supportive of the club over the years and very worthy of this presentation.
Again, thank you to all the committee and members of our club for your wonderful support. It has been my pleasure as president to be a part of such a happy and enthusiastic club. I look forward to working together for our convention in October.
Julia Jacobs
President SAIS
2005 Convention Report:
The convention committee has become a united and very had working group of members with strong dedication to the commitment of making our 2005 convention a huge success for all those who attend. We will need very strong support from all our members to achieve this and therefore we are devoting the March meeting to the convention to go into depth with you all what will be needed and how you all can contribute to tis success. We have found it necessary to change our place of accommodation. Forums and dinners from the Adelaide International Hotel to the Lakes Resort. This has been brought about by strong media articles that the Adelaide Hotel will be gutted and turned into apartments possibly starting as early as June
With the uncertainty of this we then chose The Lakes, which is a wonderful venue. We have sent all the brochures out to overseas, interstate and our own state and brochures also will go out with all Year Books.
I won’t dwell on anything more as it will all be discussed in length in March, so I encourage you all to please attend this meeting and be very willing to help us. I would like to finish by giving my sincere thank you to my committee members again Gwen, Marg, Rosemary, Natalie, Graham, John and now Pam Hilton. Thank you all so much.
Julia Jacobs
Chairperson 2005 Organising Committee
All positions were declared vacant and Peg Lane was invited to take the chair for the election of new officers.
Elections:
President: Julia Jacobs nominated by Marg Kuchel seconded Colleen Modra carried
Vice President: Pam Hilton nominated by Rosemary Turner seconded Colleen Modra carried
Secretary: Sandra Westbrook nominated by Gwen Alexandrou seconded Natalie Houba
Betty Parsons nominated by Marlene Gibson seconded Ronda Burg
A secret ballot was held with Sandra declared Secretary carried
Treasurer: Marg Kuchel nominated by Colleen Modra seconded Julia Jacobs carried
Committee: Marlene Gibson nominated by Sue Stribley seconded John Turner carried
Ronda Burg nominated by Marlene Gibson seconded Sue Stribley carried
Betty Parsons nominated by Peg Lane seconded Gwen Alexandrou carried
Librarian: Don Burg nominated by Natalie Houba seconded John Turner carried
Newsletter Editor: Sandra Westbrook nominated by Marg Kuchel seconded Gwen Alexandrou carried
Trading Table: Rhonda Burg nominated by Natalie Houba seconded Gwen Alexandrou carried
Raffle Convenor: John Turner nominated by Marg Kuchel seconded Julia Jacobs carried
Show Committee: Marg Kuchel nominated that the Show Committee remain the same members as 2004 being Marlene Gibson, Julia Jacobs, Marg Kuchel, Rhonda Burg, Jenny Kempe and Betty Parsons. Seconded Graham Kuchel carried
Auditor: Brian Patterson nominated by Marg Kuchel seconded Natalie Houba carried.
Bank Signatories: New bank signatories for 2005 will be Marg Kuchel, Julia Jacobs, Sandra Westbrooke and Pam Hilton.
AGM concluded at 8.40pm.
February General Meeting
Correspondence: Neutrog (2) Letter on sponsoring guest speakers and copies of feedback, Signa seed list from America, Bulb Express catalogue, SA Begonia Society, WA Newsletter, Garden Clubs of Australia, Adelaide Zoo Magazine, American Iris Society Bulletin, Email Prof. Sergio Orsi.
Business:
Transfer of $1000.00 to the 2005 Convention account for forth-coming expenses move Natalie Houba seconded Marg Kuchel carried.
Trial Garden:
The Trial Garden has been moved to Colleen and Les Modra’s at Impressive Irises Charleston. Colleen informed members that the beds will be ready for planting late March, early April for Tall Bearded Irises, a section for Louisiana Irises is also being prepared for planting. There have been enquiries from interstate to plant in the Trial Garden. One plant has been received from interstate for the Dykes Medal Garden.
Name Tags:
Metal nametags can be ordered through Marg for $11.80 payment to be given to Marg when you place the order.
Iris Market:
As a fund raiser for our Society a stall will be held at the Littlehampton Market Saturday March 12th, which will be the Saturday after our March meeting. Could members please bring some Rhizomes to the meeting to sell at the market? Named and colour marked on the Rhizome and please do not cut short fans and what is not sold at Littlehampton could be sold at Hahndorf the following week, so they will need to be trimmed to look fresh. Any enquiries please contact Betty 8289 8262.
Show and Tell:
Natalie Houba: Brought in four lovely coffee mugs with Irises in the colours of blue, purple, mauve and lilac, along with a beautiful serving plate with a white background with a Blue Iris painted on it.
Rhonda Burg: A black windcheater with a bright pink pretty Iris appliquéd on it.
Marg Kuchel: A stunning Tall Bearded seedling, standards were burgundy, the falls a rich velvet dark burgundy with gold stripes around the beards.
Sue Stribley: Two oil / vingar bottles with lavender Irises painted on a tan background, also a bottle of Pinot Noir wine brought from Tasmania with a lovely Iris printed on the label
Meeting concluded at 9.23pm, followed by Colleen showing slides of Irises from her recent trip to America
