This Saturday 16th we resume our season of meetings with a talk from Kevin Hughes and also the 50/50 plant sale.

50/50 Plant Sale

The 50/50 Plant Sale prior to the talk at our September meeting each autumn continues to prove popular.  The Group keeps half the money taken and returns the other half to the seller. The hall will be open from 9.40am – 10.10am to receive your plants to sell.

Please ensure that each plant has two identical labels, both of them bearing the name of the plant, your name and the price.  One will be removed so that the amount you are owed can be totted up and given to you at the end of the meeting, when you can also reclaim any unsold plants and your labels (tip: write in pencil on the labels so that they may be reused).

Selling will take place between 10.20am and 11.00am, at which point the lecture begins.  Offers of help with selling on the day will be most welcome.

Altogether, it promises to be an excellent opportunity to bag some choice plants while the soil is still warm enough to plant them.

Saturday 16th September – 11.00am 

Kevin Hughes – ‘Less Common Trees and Shrubs for the Smaller Garden’

Kevin Hughes Plants is based at Heale Gardens, near Salisbury, where he grows a superb choice of good quality hardy trees, shrubs and herbaceous perennials, many of them not widely available elsewhere.   With a vast horticultural knowledge yet an unassuming manner, he is a popular and absorbing speaker.  In this talk, he will be showing us some of the more unusual plants we can enjoy in our own gardens.  Bring a notebook!

Plants for sale
http://www.healegarden.co.uk

Roy would like to point out that Lyn’s pots are not in fact 150cm (5 feet) wide, but that the plants are 150cm in height. The original announcement is amended below to clarify the dimensions. The largest pots are 18 inches (46cm) wide by 13 inches (33cm) deep, but most are smaller than this.

We hope this will assure any hesitant carers.

Lyn Spencer-Mills has asked if we can find caring homes for the plants in her conservatory.  Ken is currently in hospital having fallen and broken a hip and Lyn herself has to go into hospital on 25th of this month and in both their absences the plants will receive no care whatsoever.

There are good and interesting plants available and these are listed below.  Any arrangements to take them away will need to be made before the end of next week, so quick responses are essential.  Lyn has said that any donations for the plants should go to Group funds.  Please contact me (Roy Stickland) urgently if you are interested in helping this humane cause (email; herongates@hotmail.com or phone 01934 843280).  A few plants have already been spoken for, those remaining are as follows:

• Hibiscus rosa sinensis, assorted colours, biclours, singles and doubles
  • 2 pots X 150cm tall (5 feet tall)
  • 8 pots X 80cm – 100cm (2.5 – 3 feet tall)
• Sansevieria ; 5 trifasciata and 1 large trifasciata ‘Black Gold’
• Amorphophallus Konjac

Roy Stickland, Chairman

For information Dulford Nursery is closing down and currently they have 50% off all containerised plants. There are some choice plants including a good selection of Malus, check out their web site.

Via Graham Salmon

Lyn Spencer-Mills has asked if we can find caring homes for the plants in her conservatory.  Ken is currently in hospital having fallen and broken a hip and Lyn herself has to go into hospital on 25th of this month and in both their absences the plants will receive no care whatsoever.

There are good and interesting plants available and these are listed below.  Any arrangements to take them away will need to be made before the end of next week, so quick responses are essential.  Lyn has said that any donations for the plants should go to Group funds.  Please contact me (Roy Stickland) urgently if you are interested in helping this humane cause (email; herongates@hotmail.com or phone 01934 843280).  A few plants have already been spoken for, those remaining are as follows:

• Hibiscus rosa sinensis, assorted colours, biclours, singles and doubles – 2 X 150cm pots, 8 X 80 -100cm pots,
• Sansevieria ; 5 trifasciata and 1 large trifasciata ‘Black Gold’
• Amorphophallus Konjac

Roy Stickland, Chairman

The raffle which precedes our monthly lecture meetings continues to be popular. However we need your help – in order to have prizes each month which will encourage everyone to buy lots of tickets, we need to source some attractive items. If you are able to donate something that would make a nice raffle prize please would you bring it along to our next meeting in September or any subsequent meeting. If there are more than five or six items donated, we will keep back some of them until the next meeting.

Our raffle organisers are both currently unable to attend our monthly meetings through circumstances beyond their control. We are therefore looking for one or two people to take on this role which will involve acquiring and storing raffle prizes and bringing five or six to each of our monthly meetings, arriving early enough to sell tickets to people coming to the lecture meetings and folding up tickets for the draw. If you feel you could help us with this task please get in touch with Roy or Jane.

Funds raised by the raffle help us to continue to provide an attractive programme for members of the Group at our current low subscription level.

Thanks for your help.

Jane Hunt

Our final “public” event of the year is the Toby Buckland Garden Festival at Forde Abbey which takes place on the 16th and 17th of September. You may have realised that this means a clash of events for us as we have our September lecture meeting (and 50/50 plant sale) on Saturday 16th of September. However we have been spared the dilemma of working out how to be in two places at the same time as the HPS Devon Group have stepped forward to man the stall on the Saturday and we will then take over on the Sunday.

If you can spare us a couple of hours of your time on the Sunday to tell people about the HPS and sell some plants, please get in touch with me (Jane). Volunteers will be able to collect their free entry ticket to the Festival at our meeting on the 16th of September. We will also need plants to sell at the Festival so if you have any to donate please either bring them along on the day or bring them to the lecture meeting on the Saturday.

Thank you!

Jane Hunt

On Tuesday 18th of July Sue & Simon Youell will be opening their garden to celebrate the HPS Jubilee. The garden will be open from 2pm to 6pm, full details are on the national website.

The garden is about one acre and is adjacent to a field that we’ve planted with a mixture of ornamental and native trees. Part of the site is on red sand and part on clay, allowing us to grow a wide variety of plants, as long as we put the right plant in the right place. The garden contains a wide range of herbaceous plants, shrubs and grasses and is designed to provide colour and interest over a long period.

For more information click here.

Janet Murley wanted to remind everyone there are seats available for the next coach trip. You can make contact by replying to this email, or direct if you have her details.

Tuesday 4th July  

Coach Trip to Longstock Park Water Gardens, Hampshire

Part of the Leckford Estate, purchased by the retailer John Lewis in 1929, the Longstock Park Water Gardens covers around seven acres. Over the years it has become one of the finest water gardens in Britain, home to 40 varieties of waterlily, over 100 different species of trees and a wealth of native wildlife.  Visit Longstock Park Nursery, with its large collection of unusual wall plants, magnificent herbaceous border and 100-yard arch entwined with roses and clematis.

Lunches available at the Leckford Farm Shop Cafe, or bring a picnic.
Plants for sale.
http://www.leckfordestate.co.uk

I’ve just finished planting out my Dahlias, and guess what?  Yep! All the cuttings rooted and I’ve got a LOT too many so I could do with some help to find homes for some good robust plants.  All are named varieties, mainly decorative types (National Dahlia Society classifications) and some cactus types plus a couple in the miscellaneous category.   All in all there are about 60 or 70 plants available  so don’t be shy about taking as many as you would like – think more positively that you’ll be rescuing them from the compost heap!

If you are even mildly interested please contact me by the usual means:  reply to this email or telephone 01934 843280.  A charitable donation would be appreciated – either for Livability or Secret World Wild Life Rescue.

I look forward to a flood of enquiries!