IN June, Whitley WI were guests of Dutton at a joint meeting held at Preston Brook Hall.
Kathleen Willis, president of Dutton, led the meeting and welcomed new member Ann Fletcher to Dutton WI.
Pat Masters, vice president of Whitley, then addressed the meeting and read a tribute to Joyce Rumney, one of Whitley's oldest and longest serving WI members, who had recently died at the age of 98.
Joyce was an important figure in the UK Guide Movement that she served throughout her life.
She first founded a Brownie pack in 1926, followed quickly by her first Guide company.
At her funeral at St Luke's Church, guides from the Appleton Trefoil Company formed a guard of honour and the Cheshire County Girl Guide Standard was placed beside the alter in tribute.
Joyce had lived through two World Wars and Pat spoke of how her personality embodied all the strengths of her generation and of the major contribution she had made to the Guide movement and the community.
She would be sadly missed and fondly remembered.
The guest speaker was EG Hawker who spoke about how the reclamation of the Lost Gardens of Heligan by Tim Smit and a television programme had led Tim to the development of the Eden Project.
Built in an old quarry with a 60m crater the area of 35 football pitches, the Eden Project is a major achievement of engineering and biotechnology.
Tim Smit has created a charitable trust that is a far-sighted conservation project aimed at bringing together alliances of different agencies to face the complex challenges of our changing environment.
It essentially tells the story of man's dependence on plants.
One of the engineering problems encountered in its building was the constant flooding of the quarry at certain times of the year.
To solve the problem, the engineers created a reservoir underneath the three biomes or giant conservatories.
The water is now used for watering the plants and maintaining humidity in the biomes.
July 3 sees St Luke's Church garden fete and July 21 the group social, which will take the form of a ploughman's lunch at Whitley Village Hall between noon and 2pm.
This includes pudding and coffee and is £6 per head.
