The Gardening Club meets in the Parish Room on the 2nd Thursday of each month at 7:45pm for 8pm start.

Contact Jacky Staff on 01453 872297

February 2012

An evening full of surprises! The first was that the dreadful snowfall as forecast by the BBC and the dire weather warnings that were frequently broadcast were very exaggerated. Perhaps not that surprising after all as these days any weather seems predicted to be more extreme than any in the past! More surprising was the number of people who turned up on a miserable, cold February evening to join us at the meeting; we were very pleased to see them all plus a couple of visitors. A less welcome surprise was that the speaker Paul Hervey-Brookes had forgotten that he was presenting a talk ‘Design in the Garden’ and came prepared with one entitled ‘Plants’. He was an entertaining speaker but we were disappointed that we did not hear the presentation we were expecting, especially as several people joined us to hear one on design.

As Paul is a well known garden designer we were given glimpses of what might have been and he has promised to return at the earliest opportunity to present his ‘Design’ talk. He had some excellent slides and interesting facts about his favourite plants although it was a very unusual choice with many plants not being generally available and also huge. Regardless of his thoughts not many of us would be happy to accommodate many six foot plus plants in our gardens let alone an eighty foot tree!

Box Gardening Club have extended an invitation to our members to join them at their meetings on the 3^rd Tuesday of the month in Box village hall at 7.30 pm with the talk at 8 pm. On 20^th March, one of our favourite speakers Val Bourne will be presenting ‘How to grow Vegetables Organically’. The fee for visitors is £5 per person unlike ours of just £2 a head.

Our next meeting is on 8^th March when Roger Umpleby will give a talk on ‘Vegetable Growing’. At this meeting Alice Adams will be selling summer bulbs and if the ground has thawed we can plant them with the expectation of a colourful garden later in the year. Hope to see you there.

Chairman

January 2012

What a wonderful audience arrived for our first meeting of 2012 and also the first on a Thursday evening.   We were all inspired by the fantastic photography that Stephen Harley-Sloman showed us to illustrate his talk: Flowers in my Garden.  The majority of the pictures were of the garden surrounding a charming thatched cottage in Haresfield, that had been the home of Stephen and his partner for many years. He has recently moved to a small village near Ledbury and is busy constructing another delightful garden, which will provide a new challenge and the opportunity to buy many more plants. 

Stephen likes to cram every corner of the garden with plants and reckons that the slugs and snails are confused by the plethora of vegetation and cause little damage.  Every year he buys over 200 tulip bulbs to replace the ones that fail from previous years and he also has a special love of hellebores and hemerocallis.  In fact he has so many favourite flowers that very few are not welcomed by him, although he mentioned a dislike of large summer flowering gladioli.  It was a very entertaining talk and at the end Stephen also had a selection of his photographs produced as cards at bargain prices.

Our next meeting is on 9th February when we welcome Paul Hervey-Brookes for his talk Design and the Garden.  Paul is a well-known designer and has won many awards for gardens at Chelsea and Malvern Shows; he is based at the Rococo Gardens near Painswick.  If you want any ideas for designing part of your garden or would just like to join us for a pleasant social event, do come along.

Chairman