This coming weekend is the first plant fair of the season. The fair will be held at : Yeo Valley Organic Garden, Holt Farm, Blagdon, BS40 7YE (map here)

10.00am – 3.00pm (pay on the gate after 1pm)
Entry: £5 
HPS or RHS members: £4 

The Early Spring Plant Fair is a prime opportunity to snaffle some fabulous plants just ahead of the season to come. Jewel-like flowers adorn every stall, and there will be hot drinks and snacks available at the cafe. The ticket price includes entry to the gardens. There is also the chance to wander around the Yeo Valley garden itself, which is beautifully laid out and has superb views over Blagdon Lake.

Tickets for 10.00 and 11.00am are sold out but tickets for 12.00 arrival are still available to pre-book via TicketSource. If you want to arrive after 1.00pm you may pre-book or pay on the gate.

In 2024, HPS and RHS members will be entitled to a small discount from the standard entry price of £5 and so should look for the £4 ticket category. You will also need to book a free parking ticket for your car at the same time. 

We also need donations of good, labelled plants for our plant stall, so if you can bring any along to the Fair, please do.

Saturday 16th March

Caradoc Doy  ‘Plant Hunters and Pioneers’

Experienced speaker Caradoc Doy is an authority on the history of the Veitch Nurseries, which were the first commercial nurseries in Britain to sponsor their own plant collectors. Their plant hunters introduced 232 orchids, nearly 500 greenhouse plants, 118 exotic ferns, about 50 conifers, 153 deciduous trees, 72 evergreen and climbing shrubs, and 122 herbaceous and 37 bulbous plants from all corners of the world, many of which are popular stalwarts in our gardens today! This is a fascinating and enthralling topic for a talk.

The talk starts at 11 with tea, biscuits and discussion from around 10:30.

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The following Saturday (23rd) is the HPS Somerset Group Early Spring Plant Fair to be held at Yeo Valley Organic Garden, Holt Farm, Blagdon, BS40 7YE.

If you can’t make it to Yeo Valley but could support our group by donating plants, then please bring them along to the meeting on the 16th.

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At every meeting we have the Plant of the Month competition. For 2024 we encourage everyone to bring along an offering to expand the competition. Your mission is to bring either a cut flower and / or a pot plant, or both. The competition is usually judged by the Speaker and points awarded towards an annual award at the AGM. The competition includes bulbs and corms, a good time to let these little gems shine.

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Guests are welcome and pay £5 on the door.

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Cover image courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/wlcutler/ under this license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Our next meeting for members and guests is this Saturday:

Saturday 17th February

Saul Walker – ‘Exotic plants: Bringing the Jungle to your Garden’

Saul has an extraordinary number of strings to his bow, including membership of the RHS Tender Plant Committee, being a Trustee of The Hardy Plant Society, and his job as Head Gardener at Stonelands House in Devon. He is an expert on exotic and tender plants, and has enormous enthusiasm for the subject.

In this talk, Saul will offer advice on how to bring jungle-style plants into our gardens, using a combination of hardy yet exotic-looking plants along with tender perennials which add that tropical pizazz! He will also help us understand how to grow, propagate and overwinter the more tender plants successfully.

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At every meeting we have the Plant of the Month competition. For 2024 we encourage everyone to bring along an offering to expand the competition. Your mission is to bring either a cut flower and / or a pot plant, or both. The competition is usually judged by the Speaker and points awarded towards an annual award at the AGM. 

Roy Stickland also asked me to remind you that the competition includes bulbs and corms, a good time to let these little gems shine.

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Tickets are available for our upcoming coach trip, use the contact form to get on board or see Penny Berry at this Saturday’s meeting.

Thursday 29th February

Coach trip to Ashwood Nurseries, Kingswinford

We start the season with a visit to the West Midlands, and an exciting opportunity to spend an enjoyable and informative day at Ashwood Nurseries for a combined garden and hellebore tour.  Ashwood is John Massey’s nursery, famous for its hellebores, cyclamen, hepaticas and other alpine plants. It is truly a treasure trove of winter delights. This is the chance to visit John Massey’s private garden in the company of one of the Ashwood team as well as a ‘behind the scenes’ look at the Hellebore Production House.   Comprehensive information is available at https://www.ashwoodnurseries.com/events/combined-garden-and-hellebore-tours

The coach will leave from Taunton (at about 8.30am) and will pick up at Clevedon.  Return to Taunton should be by 6.00pm.  The cost is £48 per person for 30 people (reduced to £42 pp for 45 people).

www.ashwoodnurseries.com

Tickets for our Early Spring Plant Fair on 23 March at Yeo Valley Organic Garden near Blagdon are now on sale. Use the button on the home page of our website www.somersethps.com as a link to the ticketing site. Please select tickets by your intended time of arrival, remembering to also book a car parking permit, and print them off. Once at the Fair you may stay as long as you wish. The Fair finishes at 3.00pm but the garden and cafe stay open until 4.00pm.

We have a wonderful selection of nurseries coming to sell their beautiful spring plants including Heartsease Plants from mid Wales, Triffids Nursery, Biocentric Plants, Elworthy Cottage Plants, Longacre Plants, CB Plants, Gardeners’ Delight, Floyds Climbers from Wiltshire, Phoenix Perennial Plants from Hampshire, Champion Plants, Leesa’s Not Just Alpines, Pennard Plants and finally Avon Bulbs making one of their last appearance at a plant fair before retirement. We also have the Gardeners’ Blacksmith coming along with their range of plant supports and garden metalwork.

Members can gain free entry to the Fair by volunteering to help on the Group’s plant stall or on the gate for a short period. We need people to help on the gate from 9.30am to 11.30am. We also need helpers on both the plant stall and the gate from 11.30am until 1.30pm and again from 1.30pm until 3.30pm. Please get in touch with me (Jane Hunt) to book your slot. Plant Fairs raise valuable funds to help the Group run the excellent programme of events on offer to members without the need for high membership fees so please volunteer your help if you can.

We also need lots of lovely plants to sell on the plant stall, so please start potting up a few now. You may bring these to the March meeting or, preferably, directly to the Fair.” 

Many thanks.

Jane

There is a National Garden Scheme volunteer required for the position of County Organiser to lead the team in Bristol, Bath and S. Glos. This is a great opportunity to meet and work with some wonderful people while raising much needed funds for Nursing and Health Charities including, Macmillan, Marie Curie and Hospice UK.

Great Gardens, Great Cake!

Please contact Su Mills to arrange an informal chat about the role at su.mills@ngs.org.uk
Tel 01454 615438
More information on the NGS website www.ngs.org.uk

At our last meeting Mickey Little spoke about snowdrops and an audience member asked about the mix for the compost. Hester Messom passed on this photo showing his ingredients. Unfortunately we don’t have the proportions right now, as Mickey mixes them on a large scale, rather than the smaller amounts for your garden.

We felt this might be relevant to our email readership and members.

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I am contacting you from Children’s Hospice South West, based at your local Children’s Hospice, Little Bridge House in Barnstaple. We are currently promoting our Open Gardens campaign, encouraging individuals to open their garden in support of Children’s Hospice South West. You can find out more about this on our website – https://www.chsw.org.uk/event/group/open-gardens

We would really appreciate it if you would be able to share this with the Hardy Plant Society members, to see if they would ever consider opening their garden, or multiple gardens opening in one village to create a local ‘Garden Safari’. 

We also offer free talks to local groups – your local Area Fundraiser would love the opportunity to talk to your group about the care that we provide, having a focus on the sensory garden here at Little Bridge House and how this helps the children and families we support.

If you have any questions regarding our Open Gardens campaign or to book in a free talk, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Cyra Braunton
cyra.braunton@chsw.org.uk

Tony Kirkham is giving a talk on ‘Growing Greener Trees for Gardens’ to Devon HPS which members and guests are welcome to attend. The talk is part of their AGM day so please note timings to avoid arriving in the middle of Tony’s talk.

Full details on the HPS website here: https://hardy-plant.org.uk/hps-event/growing-greener-trees-for-gardens-tony-kirkham/

Our first meeting of 2024 is coming up on Saturday, with a snowdrops talk:

Micky Little – ‘Snowdrops: The Fair Maids of February’

Mickey Little trained at Cannington, was a nurseryman at Kelways and Head Gardener at Castle Drogo, Hestercombe and Achamore before joining Avon Bulbs as a propagator. His knowledge of snowdrops is extensive and he has been involved in propagating new cultivars of Galanthus over the years. For those of us who are hooked on these welcoming heralds of spring, this is a talk not to be missed.

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On February 29th there will be a coach trip to Ashwood Nurseries, Kingswinford (you can read all about it on the Programme page). Penny Berry will be at the meeting on Saturday to collect booking forms.

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At every meeting we have the Plant of the Month competition. For 2024 we encourage everyone to bring along an offering to expand the competition. Your mission is to bring either a cut flower and / or a pot plant, or both. The competition is usually judged by the Speaker and points awarded towards an annual award at the AGM. 

Roy Stickland also asked me to remind you that the competition includes bulbs and corms, a good time to let these little gems shine.

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See you on Saturday from 10:30am, with the talk at 11am. Guests welcome (£5 on the door).