Below is a flyer for the Somerset Group Early Spring Plant Fair. Feel free to display this in your car, front window, local shop, bedroom or anywhere that might bring in plant buyers, the committee would be grateful.

Here are the details of next year’s Group plant fairs to put in your 2024 diaries and calendars.

• The Early Spring Plant Fair will take place at Yeo Valley Organic Garden, Blagdon on Saturday 23 March 2024. Please note that this is a week earlier than our usual “last Saturday in March” date. 

• The Summer Plant Fair is moving to a new venue, Batcombe House near Shepton Mallet, on Saturday 15 June 2024.

As usual, we will be looking for volunteers to help at both events so please step forward if you can. Free entry to the event is your reward for a short period on either the gate or plant sales table. We will also need plant donations to sell at these events so please think about potting up a few surplus plants now. Evergreens and plants that perform early in the year would be especially welcome at our March fair. Perhaps you have some surplus hellebore seedlings or young plants you don’t need? These could be brought to the lecture meeting preceding the plant fair if necessary.

As many of you are aware, we have been told that the fees for hiring West Monkton Village Hall are going up considerably with immediate effect. Without the valuable funds raised at our plant fairs we will be unable to maintain our excellent lecture meeting programme without substantially increasing membership fees. This means that we really need every member to contribute to making our plant fairs a success by way of plants to sell or physical help on the day.

Nurseryman Tom Nielsen of Biocentric Plants is looking to recycle used flower pots. Would anyone coming to this Saturday’s meeting bring their spare 1 litre and 2 litre plastic pots where Tom will collect them, please!

Many thanks, Jane Hunt

Saturday 14th October, 10:30 for 11am

Razvan Chisu, The Transylvanian Gardener – ‘Confessions of a Plantaholic’

Razvan’s addiction to plants began as a child in his native Transylvania, where he was inspired by fields covered in wildflowers. His passion remains plant-hunting, particularly in Greece and Spain. His wonderful photographs of these trips show vast areas of wildflowers – swathes of silene, crocus, species tulips, etc. – growing naturally and undisturbed. 

As well as helping to stage exhibits at the Tatton, Chatsworth and Chelsea Flower Shows, Razvan works as a garden designer.  He has an eclectic taste in plants and can’t get enough of them, as this talk will reveal.  Succulents are a particular passion, and he loves all plants that bloom in the spring, including snowdrops and cyclamen. 

Visit Rizvan’s Instagram account

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At every meeting we have the Plant of the Month competition. For 2023 we encourage everyone 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. 

Let’s give Roy and Caroline some competition this year – find your best plants and bring them along on Saturday.

Monmouthshire group sent details of this online talk, details below.

Wednesday 18th October, via Zoom at 7.30pm: ‘Paradise Lost and Restored’, a talk by Tim Walker, the former Director of Oxford Botanic garden.

Tim’s talk covers the progressive development of the Oxford Botanic Garden over the last 400 years. The history of English garden design can be told in different ways, but rarely can it be told “through the lens” of one garden.

The Oxford Botanic Garden was founded at the beginning of the 17th century and its design still bears the hallmarks of 17th century design. Tim looks at how the art of gardening has changed, or perhaps has not, in four centuries in Oxfordshire and how the Oxford Botanic Garden now reflects garden design at the beginning of the 21st century.

The title of the talk refers to the fact that one of the motivations for garden design remains the desire to create paradise on Earth.

Non-members are also welcome to this event so please feel free to circulate this invite to your family, friends and other groups too.

To book place/s, please go to https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/The-HPS-Monmouthshire-Group. Tickets are £4 for members and £6 for non-members.

We’ll also run a raffle as usual at £1 for each raffle ticket. (Participation in the raffle is of course optional – as well as paying for our raffle prizes, the funds raised go towards the cost of our speakers and improving our future programme.)

Zoom details will be sent the evening beforehand to those who have booked. The online waiting room will then open at 7pm and we ask everyone to have joined the call by 7.15pm so that the talk can begin at 7.30pm.

The new winter season of meetings starts this weekend, with a 50/50 plant sale and a talk by Katherine Crouch.

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50/50 Plant Sale at 10am

The 50/50 Plant Sale is a popular event every September. The Group keeps half the money taken and returns the other half to the seller. The hall will be open from 9.30am – 10.00am to receive your plants.

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 10.00am and 11.00am, at which point the lecture begins. Offers of help with selling on the day would be most welcome.

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Katherine Crouch, Garden Designer – ‘New Tricks for Old Gardeners’ at 11am

Katherine Crouch is a garden designer and former BBC Gardener of the Year. She says that after 40 years of gardening, she is now becoming arthritic and lazy (ring any bells?).  In this talk she will introduce shortcuts which ensure gardeners don’t have to stop gardening just because they can’t reach the ground any more, including gardens and plants suitable for low maintenance, plus a demonstration of tools and techniques.

One audience member at another local garden club said to Katherine “I have rarely seen the club so amused, engaged and lively. Your particular brand of humour (Victoria Wood combined with Sandi Toksvig) was most entertaining, but does not obscure your superb knowledge of plants and gardening.” 

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At every meeting we have the Plant of the Month competition. For 2023 we encourage everyone 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.

Let’s give Roy and Caroline some competition this year – find your best plants and bring them along on Saturday.

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See you on Saturday,

Bill

Good day Fellow Members,

I hope you have had a great summer and bountiful flowers in your garden.

I am just about to start work on the 2024 Somerset Specialist Nursery List. Please could you let me know if you have any suggestions for new nurseries for 2024 that I could contact?

Our present nurseries are:

1 Avon Bulbs
2 Beggars Roost Plants
3 Biocentric Plants Nursery
4 Broadleigh Gardens
5 Burrow Farm Gardens
6 C B Plants
7 Champion Plants
8 Charles Chesshire Plants & Garden
9 Chelston Nurseries
10 Chew Valley Trees
11 Cove Garden Nursery
12 Desert To Jungle
13 Dorset Water Lily Company
14 Elworthy Cottage Plants
15 Forde Abbey Nursery
16 Forton Nursery
17 Greenshutters Nursery & Garden Centre
18 Hill House Nursery
19 In Clover
21 Longacre Plants
22 Mallet Court Nursery
23 Margery Fish Plant Nursery
24 Middlecombe Nursery And Coffee Shop
25 Peake Perennials
26 Perrie Hale Nursery
27 Special Plants
28 The Blooming Wild Nursery
29 Triffids Nursery
30 White Post Nursery

I look forward to hearing from you with any suggestions, ideally by Sunday 17th September. It would be really helpful if you could supply a contact name as well as the nursery’s details.

Thank you in advance.

Best wishes

Angela

Angela Summers
Email: angelamsummers88@gmail.com