At our January AGM our members took the decision to become a “Society Affiliated with the Royal Horticultural Society” and we have just heard that our application has been accepted.

In return for showing that we aim to support and develop community horticulture at a local level, we receive a number of member benefits including low cost insurance, free advice and reduced entry charges to RHS events.

In our own modest way we are renewing a historical association of the village with the Society.

Sir Oswald Mosley the 2nd Baronet was a prominent 19th century horticulturalist. The Society was founded in 1809 and he was certainly a very early member.

In 1817 Sir Oswald gave a paper to the Society “On the Aphis Lanigera, or American Blight with an Account of Various Experiments for the Destruction of the Insect on Apple Trees”. In this Sir Oswald describes his experiments at Rolleston with sulphur sprays and tobacco smoke and finally recommends brushing trees with train oil.

A number of accounts of Rolleston weather and plants appear in the horticultural journals of the time and from 1841-45 Sir Oswald was a Vice-President of the Society with the Duke of Devonshire as President.

In 1841 a Dr Alexander Henderson was appointed Secretary to the Society and we can associate him with Sir Oswald through a book that he wrote on Ann Moore, the fasting woman of Tutbury. Her fraudulence was uncovered by a committee chaired by Sir Oswald.

It has been suggested that the assistant secretary of the time and later Secretary, John Lindley, who gives his name to the RHS library laid out the trees in Rolleston Hall grounds according to their botanical classification.

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