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

Well in advance of our new season of meetings is a reminder that we will be selling plants.

We will welcome Katherine Crouch to our meeting on 16th September to speak to us on the subject of “New Tricks for Old Gardeners”. This should be an amusing and informative talk to help keep you gardening, whatever your age. 

Prior to the meeting we will be holding our popular 50/50 plant sale – bring your plants for sale with two identical labels in each pot, each showing the plant name, the price and your name/initials.

One label will be removed if your plant is sold and at the end of the meeting you can collect half of the money taken for your plants and the labels will also be returned to you.

Write labels in pencil so that you can reuse them. Prices ending in a zero only please! The other half of the takings will go to Group funds.

Offers of help with the plant sale would be welcomed.

See you soon, Jane Hunt.

Now that I’m back at Beggars Roost and the builders are sort-of finished I’m obsessively battling the drought trying to make a new garden. To make it more manageable it’s going to be essential to find homes for my ex-nursery stock, and there are far too many daylilies!

As you know Hemerocallis never die so even after the long neglect they are beginning to flower wonderfully (see below, taken this morning). HPS members have helped me before with surplus plants, and these will be bargains, if not completely free.

I’ll be here all next week, from Monday 26^th  to Friday 30^th, then away for a few days to attend an RHS Trial meeting for Hemerocallis (of course!) but back here Friday 7^th -Sunday 9^th .

Parking here is very limited so please ring me on 01278 741519 to make sure of a clear time, and money would have to be cash or cheque. There are some real beauties but my old bones can’t look after them all now.

Ro FitzGerald