On 13th April Derry Watkins will be returning to Garden Club to talk about “Pushing the Boundaries: Borderline hardy plants you can’t live without”.
Derry runs Special Plants Nursery near Bath and the garden is open on Tuesdays from April to October. Both are well worth a visit. Look on the website for information on online ordering, courses at Special Plants and much valuable information.
Derry is author of two books on greenhouse gardening and has introduced many plants from her plant collecting trips to South Africa and elsewhere. The evening’s talk will focus on using hardy plants in your garden to good effect. Derry will bring plants for sale from her nursery on the evening.
Recent Meetings
There was a late change of plan for the March meeting as Jo Thompson who was due to talk on growing flowers for cutting was taken ill. Fortunately for us Roger Lloyd was able to step in and gave us an excellent illustrated talk on Umbels. We learned that umbels are not all from the family umbelifera nor are all umbeliferae actually umbels ie they have short flowers stalks which all spread out from a central point. We heard about using them in their great variety in the garden and their medicinal and allergenic qualities too. Here is the list of plants referred to.
On 9th February Justine Gallaccio & Stephen Anderton gave a talk on “How to make your garden easier to care for.
They looked in detail at saving time and effort by choosing plants that grow well without too much intervention and Justine showed us many examples. Stephen focused on different ways of managing your garden, thinking about what to leave out, whether to get help, concentrating on what is most important to you and how to simplify without making the garden less attractive.
Helen Picton on “Why Wait for Spring?”
Monday 12th January at 8pm
8th December
AGM and very enjoyable Christmas Members’ Evening with a brilliant horticulturally themed quiz organised by Jacky & Ian Mills.
Our November meeting was an excellent talk by the internationally important garden designer Arne Maynard about the process of designing and landscaping the garden around his beautiful medieval tower house near Usk.
The October talk by Paul Green of Greens Leaves Nursery in Newent was fascinating. With no Powerpoint or pictures to support him, he picked up plants, all new cultivars, from a huge selection he had brought with him, showed them to us and talked in detail about their virtues.
His theme was taken from the Radio 4 programme “The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread?” The nursery trade sees the production and development of new plant varieties and cultivars as vital but it is valid to ask whether some of these new plants coming through are better than the forms we are used to. We looked for example at new burberis which have different forms and attractive leaf colours, some very thorny and others less so. All useful in specific places. Of course the answer is that there are virtues in both the old and the new.
It was really helpful to have a look at what’s out there and many people took the opportunity to buy some lovely plants.
llanthonygardenclub.org 