Samantha is an award winning photographer with specialist subjects including the garden and wildlife.  Learn how to attract wildlife into your garden and the basic rules in photography so that you can take your own records.  Bring along your camera for interactive advice.

Pick up a wealth of tips on how to make your garden easier to manage using natural materials and methods, fun for families and ideal for both new and experienced gardeners.  Enhance the design of your garden with practices such as crop rotation and companion planting to deter pests naturally.  Includes advice for those without a large garden.

With a small garden or even without one at all, there are many crops that can be grown for culinary use in the kitchen.  Samantha will give you some fresh ideas for your dinner parties with advice on how to grow them with minimum effort.  Including herbs, salad leaves, fruit, vegetables and flowers, there is something for everyone.

In this gardening talk, Samantha will take you through the gardening calendar, not only in terms of what to do and what to grow in any month of the year, but she will also bring to life some of the folklore and superstitions which seem to pop up at various times throughout the year.

From her initial career as an officer in the Royal Air Force, Samantha has had a diverse journey through business, moving abroad and returning to the UK to run her own company.  She will speak about some of the reasons for change, how she has had to overcome hurdles along the way to achieve a work-life balance as a mother and her efforts to help others as Chair of Business Women’s Link and in charity work.

If you’ve ever wondered about the origins of some of our best-loved fruit and vegetables, then this talk takes an entertaining look back at the historical roots of what we like to grow and eat and how some of them have been introduced to the UK.  Everyone will find this educational and interesting, even those without a garden.

Who is Original Touch?

Samantha will introduce a number of unusual vegetable crop varieties that you can grow and eat, perhaps from a different culture or even a different era, along with advice on how to make some delicious and authentic recipes from the harvest.  Sourced by Original Touch from around the world, many of these garden seed varieties are rare or unheard of in the UK.

Not just for new gardeners

Learn about crops that can be grown to deter pests and disease without the use of chemicals