The January edition of our monthly newsletter News Shoots has been distributed to Friends by email, and is also available in the password-protected Friends Area of the website. Print copies are on the way to members without email addresses.

2020 was a difficult and frustrating year for our garden volunteers, with little or no work possible during lockdown and limited numbers allowed back into the Gardens as a result of the Coronavirus regulations. So we are delighted to record that, despite all the challenges, garden volunteers managed to work 1,484 hours in total during the year, and the plant propagation team contributed a further 1,939 hours.

Christmas Day is the one day of the year when our gardeners get some well-deserved time off, and so the Gardens will be CLOSED on Friday. Between Boxing Day and 2 January closing time will be an hour earlier than normal at 3pm.

Along with a number of Sheffield green spaces, the Botanical Gardens are lit up for the festive season, with changing colours in the glass pavilions and lights on the mulberry tree in the Four Seasons garden.

We are proud to hold three National Plant Collections at the Botanical Gardens, including the only collection of Diervilla, a small deciduous North American shrub, grown for its yellow flowers that are very attractive to bees. You can now explore…

Our lecture organiser has been busy booking more speakers for our Zoom lectures for the first part of 2021.

We’re delighted to be welcoming multi-award-winning garden designer, Jo Thompson…

The December edition of our monthly newsletter News Shoots has been distributed to Friends by email, and is also available in the password-protected Friends Area of the website.

For National Tree Week we’ve launched a new digital trail of some of the trees in the Gardens.

Our tree experts have selected some of the most beautiful and interesting specimens to view in a leisurely hour’s stroll, accompanied by an audio guide.

Volunteers Peter and Trish Kohn have filled one of the greenhouses in the Gardens with over a thousand of their seed-raised plants for safe-keeping over the winter. Most are from South Africa, representing almost 250 different species.

Friends can look forward to a copy of The Review arriving in the post this week, along with your membership card for 2020/21. The Review is the new name for our long-standing newsletter, and reflects its intended shift to a weightier publication with longer articles.

The new website for the Friends of the Botanical Gardens, Sheffield went live in late November 2020. It means people can now subscribe to become a Friend online for the first time.

A highly unusual fungus has been spotted in the pavilions. The basket fungus Ileodictyon cibarium is growing in the New Zealand section (to the rear of the furrow, sadly, so not visible from the windows).

Thanks to all the Friends who attended our first-ever online AGM! Over fifty people joined us by Zoom on 10 November and around twenty voted beforehand by email or phone call.

You can help the Gardens be recognised as one of the nation’s favourite parks and gardens by voting in the Green Flag People’s Choice awards.

Lovers of the beautiful collection of trees in the Botanical Gardens will soon be able to follow a digital tour, which will take visitors on a trail of some of the finest specimens.