On Saturday 14th July we are throwing open the doors of the Study Centre and welcoming everyone to help us celebrate 50 wonderful years of Minstead Study Centre.  Join us between 12.30 and 4.30 for food, drink, music, crafts, activities, games, stories, animals, history, dancing - and much more.  It's free to enter and most activities are free too.   Come and help us celebrate!

We have recently received funding from the Lyndhurst Co-op, the Hampshire Gardens Trust, the Hampshire County Council Waste Prevention Team and the New Forest National Park Authority towards our Big Grow project.  We are hugely grateful for this support and are delighted that the garden is beginning to look amazing (see our blog for recent pictures).  Our visiting children work in the learning garden every day and get to pick and eat the delicious fresh produce from it.   At the moment the salads are abundant!

We are well on the way to achieving our funding target for the Big Grow.  The Barker Mill Foundation have generously donated £5,000 per year for this year and next and we raised £2000 through the Tesco Bags of Help scheme!  As a result, we have been able to employ our new Head Gardener, Adam , who is making huge progress already with turning our fruit and veg patch into a super-productive educational garden.

We held another very enjoyable, and successful fundraising quiz night last Friday at Minstead Village Hall. 21 teams of 6 people battled it out over 10 rounds of puzzling quiz questions, with extra rounds at half time including "what's that smell" and "RIP 2017". A delicious dinner was served and the raffle was very well -supported,  with lucky winners going home with all sorts of goodies including lunch for 4 at Limewood and a day's cookery course at the Chewton Glen cookery school.

Thank you to everyone who came and to all our supporters for donations of prizes.