The Society held its AGM on 26 November at the University of Buckingham’s Vinson Centre under the (acting) chairmanship of Ian Orton.
Around 40 members attended the meeting, although this number could have been inflated by non-members who had come to listen to Warren Whytes talk, which immediately followed.
Mr Orton gave a comprehensive report of the Society’s activities for the year supplemented by contributions by Gill Jones, the membership secretary and David Child, the treasurer.
Gill reported that we now have 193 members compared with 179 a year ago.
According to David the Society finances are in a healthy state. As a consequence there is no need for an increase in subscriptions.
Mr Orton reported that following the end of the Covid-19 pandemic normality had returned with both the executive committee and special interest group meeting on a physical, rather than a virtual, basis.
More importantly, for the second year in succession, the Society was able to reinstate both the annual garden party and lecture as well as the AGM.
For the second year running the Society had a stall at the Celebrate Buckingham Day complete with a Roll the Dice game. This attracted a lot of interest as well as generating new members.
Other social events the Society oversaw during the course of the year included another very interesting tree walk led by Michael Hunt in May.
Michael, one of our members, once again demonstrated his amazing knowledge of our local trees, one of the defining characteristics of the town. Going forward, with Michael’s help, the Society would like to organise more tree walks along with more talks and events.
The Society once again ran its Buckingham Trader of the Year Competition with Smith and Clay winning the title in 2022. Looking forward the Society would like to resume its Buckingham Conservation Awards.
As mentioned above we were again able to reinstate the annual garden party and lecture.
This year, the ever popular Barry Smith, the head gardener at Stowe gave the lecture. The garden party took place in the gardens of Ondaatje Hall, now the home of Professor James Tooley, the University’s vice-chancellor and his wife Cynthia.
Land use planning-related matters continue to dominate the Society’s activities and the annual report outlined both the scope and range of its activities along with the challenges faced going forward.
All the existing members of the executive committee agreed to stand for re-election and were elected unanimously.
Ian Orton was elected as chairman, a post which has remained vacant since the previous AGM.