• Trials and tribulations of exhibiting perfect flowers

    Thursday, October 20, 2022 - 12:22

    By Victoria Plum

    The great plant exchange took place this month, otherwise known as The Bag Sale, at the Reepham & District Gardening Club.

    Excited members peered into plastic sacks to see what rare surprises were to be had. We traded day lilies for quinces, allium for acanthus, tiger lilies for cactus.

    The meeting’s talk was by Johnny Walkers of Taylors Bulbs. The top horticultural shows are the shop window for plant producers that supply garden centres and other retailers.

    Johnny Walkers has won 25 gold medals in successive years at Chelsea, and we heard all about the trials and tribulations of exhibiting perfect flowers within a perfect display.

    I remember a winning competitor at the gardening club’s summer show telling us that he had chosen his five prize-winning, uniform runner beans from more than 100, which he had had to pick, which emphasises the colossal number of blooms and spare flowers that have to be grown by a commercial competitor to ensure success.

    To compound problems, it now seems that floral foam – Oasis – is banned by the Royal Horticultural Society. It is non-recyclable and non-biodegradable, toxic for humans and animals (but luckily you can still buy it via Amazon).

    Exhibitors at RHS shows are certainly going to have problems knowing where to stick their stems to stay upright in future. I wonder what they did before 1954, when Oasis was invented?

    A friend gave me this extraordinary fruit (pictured above). It is violet in colour and grew on her Akebia quinata, or chocolate vine. Although a pretty and unusual plant, it is very invasive and we really should think twice about letting these vigorous foreigners into our gardens.

    Tuesday 15 November sees the next Reepham & District Gardening Club meeting, when Erica Vaccari will talk about Bressingham Gardens, at 7.45 pm (doors open at 7.30 pm) in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham.

  • Controlling insect pests without chemicals

    Friday, September 23, 2022 - 08:44

    By Victoria Plum

    I knew it would be good and it was. At this week’s meeting of Reepham & District Gardening Club, Dr Ian Bedford led us on another fascinating journey round the insect world.

    Ian is an entomologist, now happily retired, who used to work at the John Innes Centre in Norwich. The centre takes its remit to ensure food security extremely seriously.

    “Food security” means ensuring that the world’s vastly growing population will have enough to eat. So research into the activities of insects and invertebrates is crucial – 20% of food crop is destroyed by them.

    While the advent of chemical pesticides, both systemic and otherwise, has led to cheaper food production, we now understand that there are more suitable, subtle and less environmentally damaging ways to successfully grow crops: we are learning to be cleverer.

    Research has led to real understanding of how these small creatures function (although I suspect we will never understand it all) and we now know all sorts of extraordinary facts; for instance, that some plants send out distress signals when under insect attack that attract predators to counteract it.

    This world of tiny creatures, upon which we all ultimately depend for our lives, has evolved, with every creature finding a niche and all being interdependent. The complexity of it all is mind-blowing.

    We like to enjoy a cup of tea or coffee and home-made cake at the end of the gardening club meeting – it’s free!

    Gold stars go to Irene and Carole for helping with the washing up. If you would like a gold star you are welcome to join us in the kitchen next time.

    At 7.45 pm on Tuesday 18 October at Reepham Town Hall, Church Street, the speaker, Johnny Walkers, will tell us about the traumas and excitement of bulb growing.

    This next meeting will include a bag sale. Please bring any spare perennials in a carrier bag (or flower pot, I have potted up some self-sown seedlings to bring as they would not survive in a bag) when they will be sold at a bargain price for club funds.

    The spiny or spiked shieldbug (Picromerus bidens) – there are lots of these on my raspberries, although they suck the juice from caterpillars, not raspberries. Photo: Tina Sutton

  • Importance of invertebrates for soil health

    Thursday, September 8, 2022 - 17:03

    By Victoria Plum

    I was tidying up in the garden this week. Really I think of it as straightening rather than tidying, as it’s just setting a sort of order to stray flower pots and weeds, tying stuff up, cutting other stuff down – I had to cut down some very vigorous vine sprays.

    My vines, like all my deep-rooted plants, have continued to grow through this difficult gardening summer and have been particularly quick to put on an extra growth spurt since the limited recent rain fell.

    I cut them down and immediately thought, since I try to waste very little, that I should keep the best of the leaves in the freezer, which is what my Greek friends do, for making dolmathes. (In fact, I don’t make dolmathes; it’s far too fiddly and they never taste the same in this country anyway.)

    So I fell to thinking how to make use of the luscious leaves. Yes, I thought, I’ll put them in my (compost) hot bin, where the moist greenery would help to make up for the lack of grass mowings this year.

    Then I thought I could implement a labour-saving shortcut: I could just leave the leaves on the ground (saving the trip to the bin and the trip back next year with the compost) as part of that crucial strategy of regenerative gardening, which is protecting and feeding the soil rather than just raping it to grow your plants in the short term.

    My garden looked fabulous early in the year, but as growth died off (I’m thinking particularly of day lilies here) I just left the dead leaves on the ground because I knew that if I cut the old and scorched leaves away completely, the soil would have had no protection from the blistering sun.

    So that has been the pattern this summer: to leave old plant matter on the soil surface to give respite to the tiny invertebrates that are working for my soil health and a layer of protection against the baking sun.

    I acknowledge that the dead leaves don’t look pretty but the long-term health of my plants and soil is more important to me.

    Above: A fly on my hollyhocks (look up flies on Wikipedia for some astonishing sights). Below: A spider and spiderlings at Oulton Chapel this summer. Photos: Tina Sutton

    So my straightening up now is to clear the thickest layers of leaves to let the rain get through, although lots of the leaves have broken down by themselves now, primroses for instance.

    My next job is to rake the grass as vigorously as I can to get up as much dead stuff as possible, and then when rain is forecast strew some lawn seed in the worst-hit places.

    I regard watering a lawn a sin and a terrible waste of water as grass always recovers remarkably well, but I bought the seed early in the year and grass seed doesn’t keep well so I might as well use it up to thicken the sward and repair the excavations my daughter’s puppy enjoyed making.

    I am looking forward to the next Reepham & District Gardening Club meeting on Tuesday 20 September, at 7.45 pm in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham (there will of course be tea and cake).

    The speaker will be Dr Ian Bedford, a retired research entomologist and a down-to-earth scientist, who will tell us about “Bugs on the Move” – clever insects and invertebrates.

    As laypeople we know so little of the vast insect world and yet all life depends on it. For instance there are countless sorts of beetles – just look on Wikipedia, where you will find the array truly astonishing.

  • Green-up your driveway – and throw away the weedkiller

    Tuesday, August 9, 2022 - 11:47

    By Victoria Plum

    I’ve tried to encourage plants to grow in my gravel for some time; at last I have hollyhocks.

    The seedlings don’t like competition from other plants when struggling to grow, which I’m told is the reason they choose the most inhospitable crevices, as you can see as you enjoy the fabulous hollyhock show in Reepham and Cawston, where plants spring from the smallest cracks between pavement and brickwork.

    I gathered seeds from plants wherever I happened to be and just threw them on the gravel when I got home. Some grew and some didn’t.

    The colours were a surprise, as colour can only be guaranteed by taking side-shoots as cuttings from your chosen favourite.

    My gorgeous hollyhocks grew far too tall and were blown about by the wind, so next year I aim to pinch out the top-shoots since they naturally throw out many flowering side-shoots and I will see what happens; perhaps this will work.

    I have planted Verbena bonariensis in the gravel but it has never thrived, so this year I will follow my own advice and just throw seed in the hope it finds its happy place.

    The attractive fan-shaped, self-sown seedlings of Sisyrinchium grow freely on my gravel, and if they grow too tall I will pull them up.

    However, because of poor fertility (the gravel is on compressed road planings) with no root access to a good depth of soil, I doubt whether they will.

    Geraniums self-seed as does Linaria, and I have had a bumper crop of wild strawberries along one edge. No lush photos of these I’m afraid, as like many plants they have shrivelled to nothing in the heatwave.

    I regard my drive (the edges anyway) as an extension of the garden and an interesting area where I can see what chooses to grow and form what in posher places might be called a dry garden – or perhaps a desert garden this year.

    I notice that where the car drives over the gravel on my 25-foot drive nothing grows. It is only at the undisturbed edges where plants are happy to creep in. And it is easy to walk over the edges and scuffle the weeds with my foot if something unwanted creeps in.

    I see no need whatsoever for the use of any chemical herbicide in such circumstances – or indeed any circumstances.

    I had another shock last week. Good friends visiting (well-educated and environmentally aware doctors) admitted that on their return home they would get out the Roundup because they spray their Japanese knotweed every year.

    Why? I asked. To get rid of it, they said. Well, I said if you sprayed it last year and the year before and the year before that, then why is it still there? They had no answer.

    I can talk about Japanese knotweed till the cows come home as I too have battled it. In the past I have tried everything, even Roundup, in desperation, but I now find just pulling up any shoots where they occur is the best plan.

    The Reepham & District Gardening Club Summer Show is upon us. In this difficult year, entries might be diminished so perhaps we need to make an extra effort to support the club, and you never know perhaps win a prize and glory too.

    It’s always an entertaining evening – Tuesday 16 July in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, a little earlier than usual to set out your entries. Good luck!

    Above: These hollyhocks grew so tall and fell over, so I brought some in to enjoy indoors. Photo: Tina Sutton

  • Walled kitchen garden brimming with activity

    Monday, July 25, 2022 - 19:54

    By Victoria Plum

    I got to Salle Park early on Sunday 24 July for the opening of the gardens for the National Garden Scheme (NGS) because the weather was so hot.

    The guide you need is the “Yellow Book”, the handbook for the NGS. (I have seen copies of the other The Yellow Book, famously connected with Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, in the library at the UEA, a very different publication.)

    The scheme relies on keen gardeners of interesting gardens being kind enough to open them, occasionally, to the paying public.

    Proceeds go to NHS charities and a colossal amount of money is raised this way. In fact, a few years ago the Reepham & District Gardening Club enjoyed an interesting talk from the Norfolk organiser of the scheme.

    I was keen to see the Salle walled garden as traditionally the microclimates created in such an enclosure ensured a longer growing season and the ability to grow exotic or difficult produce to feed those at the “Big House” when it wasn’t so easy to pop along to Waitrose.

    The gardeners now employ a no-dig policy, and signs explained the pros (several of those) and cons (not many) of the system. A good mulch is the key, of course.

    Many new heritage orchard trees have been planted. This country lost countless orchards when they became unappreciated and uneconomic with the onslaught of Golden Delicious apples from France when the UK joined what used to be called the Common Market in 1973.

    There is an ice house – we wanted to get in it because the day was so hot, but sadly it was locked.

    The formal topiary in front of the house looked impressive, the rose beds, too, though of course nothing can look at its very best after such a succession of hot days.

    The walled garden is open for visits on the first Tuesday of August and September, from 10 am – 3 pm. Entry is just £3 and the gardeners will answer your queries. Keep an eye out for the signs.

    Tuesday 16 August at 7.45 pm sees the gardening club’s summer show and social evening.

    Yes, there will be a quiz, and it’s worth coming along just to see the entries in the novelty-shaped vegetable competition. It is a light-hearted and diverting evening.

    Competition can be fierce but has not led to anyone’s car tyres being let down – yet!

    Below: Walled kitchen garden at Salle Park. Photos: Tina Sutton

  • A year in the market garden was worth the wait

    Wednesday, July 13, 2022 - 14:54

    By Victoria Plum

    There’s nothing like live entertainment. The projection screen wouldn’t work, the high-tech projector wouldn’t work, the sound system wouldn’t work. And someone nearly forgot the raffle!

    However, the Reepham & District Gardening Club committee and speaker strove to overcome these small problems and I certainly enjoyed the June talk by Rosemary Ward on “A year in the market garden” in Reepham Town Hall.

    Although retiring soon, she described for us AJ Ward’s impressive market garden, 45 acres, based at Spixworth. All the garden’s more than 30 sorts of veg were grown from seed, on site, from January.

    We saw pictures of this huge, partly automated system operation, completed under glass – but with no heat.

    Hardening off, planting out, covering or protecting against carrot fly, pigeons and rabbits – all carefully done to ensure a successful crop.

    With some cauliflower seed costing five pence each you need to do everything you can to ensure the success of that plant. But such backbreaking, hard work.

    I know half an hour in the garden can be very tiring, but to work all day with your living depending on it? What a test, and all success depending on the weather.

    Long-term employees have become like family. Vegetables were sold to Roys of Wroxham (one of my favourite shops) and over the years farmers’ markets and Norwich city shops have been supplied, and even a box scheme delivered.

    Well-flavoured varieties were always chosen to give the customer the best, but what a fickle bunch we are, since Rosemary said that sales of carrots go down by 90% when not bunched with their greenery intact.

    Because I believe we need to encourage a resurgence of market gardening expertise and know-how, I asked about apprenticeships but apparently the apprentices they had didn’t like working in the rain!

    Rosemary sees beauty in her cabbages as we saw from her lovely photographs, and she just can’t stop growing plants, and now as retirement looms, she specialises in growing unusual perennials, some of which she brought along for us to buy.

    Cawston used to have at least one market garden; the Oakes family gave it to the village when they retired in 2000 to be made into the magnificent playing field which we now have behind the village hall.

    I know of market gardens that were at Saxthorpe and Little London, and Norwich was once ringed with market gardens and seed growers.

    If you look at old photographs of Norwich or Yarmouth markets, or in fact any towns, you will see a mass of small stalls. These were the outlet for the many market gardens in each area along with eggs, meat and bread, so fresh, locally grown produce was always available. We would now be calling them artisan producers.

    The next meeting of Reepham & District Gardening Club meeting is on Tuesday 19 July at 7.45 pm in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham. Bryan Thurlow will entertain us with the diverting tale of a small boy evacuated to a small farm near Bury St Edmunds.

     

    Below are the answers to last month’s photo closeup “what is it?” competition. Top: a tea towel for drying the Reepham & District Gardening Club cups and saucers. Middle: garden string – a lucky win at the gardening club raffle in June. Bottom: a surreal seedpod from the nigella self-sown seedlings I showed you a couple of months ago.

  • A hot visit to Burghley House

    Saturday, June 18, 2022 - 13:29

    By Victoria Plum

    A coach full of keen Reepham & District Gardening Club members enjoyed a terrific, though very hot, day at Burghley House.

    The special feature was a guided tour from Joe Whitehead, head gardener there for just over four years.

    He explained the Capability Brown landscape, recent changes and plans for the future, and how the expansion of outdoor attractions have become an important economic necessity for “Treasure Houses”. (Burghley House is part of the independent Treasure Houses heritage consortium, of which Holkham Hall is also a member.)

    Above: Joe Whitehead describing the red, white and blue planting for the Platinum Jubilee weekend at Burghley House. Below: One of the features in the Garden of Surprises at Burghley House. Photos: Tina Sutton

    Food and clothing are all labelled with their country of origin. Even growing plants now have “passports”. However, not so our supermarket flowers or those on the garage forecourt.

    Did you know that many of these are grown in Africa, using scarce water supplies, sprayed with gases to prolong shelf life, flown to the Netherlands and then driven here?

    Obviously, they cannot be as fresh as locally grown flowers; think about the resources wasted.

    At last month’s meeting of the Reepham gardening club, Gabi Read of Gabriel’s Garden at Gissing gave us a dynamic view into her world of growing cut flowers for her floristry business.

    She has developed labour-saving techniques to help her make the most of the specially chosen seeds she grows and propagates, and her acre seems to be a hub where a wealth of flowers and foliage are grown to provide material throughout the year.

    She runs courses and holds open garden days; volunteers are welcome, as are foreign students who come to exchange their labour in return for practical growing knowledge.

    Organic methods and no-chemical growing are important to her, and she has learnt to “sit tight” when an aphid invasion happens, because she has the experience to know that predators will soon come in to feast on the nuisance creatures. The flowers certainly looked lovely.

    Gabi belongs to a membership association called Flowers from the Farm, which champions British seasonal cut flowers, where you can find local growers/florists who are also passionate about what they do and sell wonderful fresh, local flowers.

    Nearby, at Edgefield, Ellie Frost of Norfolk Flower Farm has just started a new venture to supply locally grown fresh flowers.

    Meanwhile, Eves Hill Veg Co also has freshly picked flowers for sale. This community market garden has just moved to Aylsham and if you’d like an extra dose of sunshine have a look at the website. (You can still order super fresh veg for delivery close to your home).

    British Flowers Rock! was started by the delightful Ben Cross of Crosslands Flower Nursery in Sussex.

    He works from the family farm, which has been run for four generations, and started when his great-grandfather was given settlement land in the 1930s by the government.

    He grows only alstroemeria in huge greenhouses and sells by post. These flowers are a low-impact crop, do not need heat, use little water and last well as a cut flower with many colours available. They are some of my favourites.

    I’m looking forward to the Reepham & District Gardening Club talk on Tuesday 21 June at 7.45 pm in Reepham Town Hall by Rosemary Ward on “A Year in the Market Garden”.

  • Garden chemicals are poisoning our planet

    Monday, May 16, 2022 - 20:09

    By Victoria Plum

    The sun shone on the Reepham & District Gardening Club committee as they staunchly set out the stall selling a gorgeous and interesting range of plants for sale in Reepham Market Place.

    This annual event is always well patronised. I came home with well-grown cosmos daisies, a Venus flytrap, an unusual white scented hosta and some other bits and pieces. What a variety for a plantaholic!

     

    Reepham & District Gardening Club annual plant sale, May 2022. Photos: Tina Sutton

     

    Our next meeting features Gabriel Read telling us about “A Year in the Cut Flower Garden” on Tuesday 17 May at 7.45 pm in Reepham Town Hall as usual, when membership cards will be available with all the coming year’s meetings with speakers listed.

    I dined with friends recently who are intelligent, politically aware – friends who are not eco-warriors but try to be eco-friendly and do the right green stuff, try not to buy plastic, they shop locally, enjoy grass-fed meat (not too much though), drive an eco-car and so on.

    Over the evening we set the world to rights, sorted out Ukraine, Mr Putin, Mr Johnson, local bus routes, farmers, education and immigration, and then our host said, “Tomorrow I’m going to spray off my daughter’s garden.” “Don’t do it,” I said. “I have to,” he said, “it’s got too bad.”

    I was shocked that intelligent, aware people, with children and grandchildren waiting to inherit the Earth, still think it’s ok to add yet more poisons to our planet.

    Rachel Carson wrote the seminal warning book Silent Spring in 1962. Have we learnt so little in 60 years?

    And I also noted while shopping at Woodgate Nursery in Aylsham (where BTW if you are a Reepham Gardening Club member you can claim 10% discount) there were plenty of large containers of Roundup for sale.

    It will only be government action that can save us from ourselves and our casual habits.

    Brown fields and brown verges are evidence I have seen today of the profligate use of herbicides.

    Mark Cocker in Crow Country mentions the “chemical-drenched monocultures” of the agricultural clay lands from Norwich down to Suffolk.

    To combat this on our very small garden scale we are all engaging with “No Mow May”, leaving our lawns uncut to encourage the invertebrates upon which many animal lives depend.

    But what is the point if the “go to” remedy for any ill is the easy way, just take the cap off a bottle?

  • Gardening club returns to 'PC world'

    Wednesday, April 20, 2022 - 18:06

    By Victoria Plum

    A dynamic AGM for the Reepham & District Gardening Club marked a real sense of return to the world we knew PC (pre-Covid).

    The popular annual plant sale is planned for 14 May, a Saturday as always, but if you have plants for sale (I have some, just extra bits of plants that I don’t have room for or have too many of) please take them to the Bircham Centre, suitably labelled for sale, on the evening of Friday 13 May from 6–7 pm.

    Already a gardening club trip is planned to Burghley House near Lincoln for Thursday 16 June (mark your diary now).

    Joe Whitehead, who used to be head gardener at Salle and who now holds the same position at Burghley House, will give a guided tour in the afternoon.

    I’m looking forward to this as it’s always fascinating to have a plant expert tell you the secrets of a place, revealing so much more than you gain from just being a casual observer.

    The enthusiastic and vivacious Ellen Mary gave us a stimulating talk on “Plants and Nature for Well-being” at this month’s gardening club meeting.

    She acknowledged that, since we were all gardeners, we probably understood this already, but she gave facts to back up the benefits she explained.

    Some of the members were convinced by her enthusiasm for dandelions; some were not. You have to admire the tenacity of weeds, she said.

    She extolled the virtues of gardening with no gloves, contact with the soil and its many organisms being regenerative for our well-being, as is going barefoot in the garden. Oh, yes, and it is OK to hug trees.

    The next gardening club meeting is at 7.45 pm on Tuesday 17 May in Reepham Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, when Gabriel Read will talk about the organic flowers she grows for floristry in “A Year in the Cut Flower Garden”.

    I look forward to this event, too, since obviously I like flowers in my garden, but always count them a bonus.

    I can never quite manage that effect of colours planted together for special effect or gorgeous colour harmonies or an attractive succession through the seasons to ensure colour in the garden or colour in the house. If it happens for me, it is usually through sheer chance.

    What made me understand that it really didn’t matter and was nothing to worry about was something the late Beth Chatto said.

    She was keen on foliage because the foliage leaf patterns and colours are there for a long period of the year while flowers are fleeting.

    Therefore I tend to concentrate on interesting and varied leaves in my garden and variations in texture.

     

    This nameless shrub, a gift, has been gorgeous for weeks as its leaves unfurled. Photo: Tina Sutton

     

    This ornamental rhubarb shows colour for months as it grows through the season. Photo: Tina Sutton

     

    Variegated honesty shows very pretty leaves, almost from the moment it emerges, and takes on a ghostly look in the evenings as the summer progresses because of the luminosity of the foliage. Photo: Tina Sutton

  • Spreading the message about the benefits of wilding

    Friday, March 18, 2022 - 09:47

    By Victoria Plum

    I’m told that the frantic boiling of extra kettles marked the March meeting of the Reepham & District Gardening Club, successfully held in St Michael’s because of work under way at the town hall, when a magnificent 45 people turned out to hear Bob Coutts’ engaging talk on gardening for spring.

    He is the retired head gardener at Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk, and if Covid had not prevented me from attending I would have liked to ask him his view on the current exciting changes on that vast estate.

    The owner – Hugh Crossley, 4th Baron Somerleyton – is instigating the WildEast initiative to encourage anyone to become involved by allowing both small and large areas of land to be left for nature. These could be gardens, schools, parks, stations or odd corners of difficult-to-manage land.

    He sees that land has become overmanaged with tidiness and order continuously pushing back nature.

    The aim of WildEast is to allow 20% of East Anglia to be “wilded” in this way – this is in addition to the huge plans for rewilding and regenerating a large part of the Somerleyton Estate.

    There is a mass of information online about this project – we are so lucky to have Somerleyton and Wild Ken Hill on our East Anglian doorstep.

    Meanwhile, in my garden, I have adopted a friend’s habit of seed spreading.

    When tidying up, if I find a seed head of something I like, I crush it gently in my hand and scatter widely. That way the seed has a chance of landing somewhere it will be happy and thrive.

    I have tried for several years (with several packets of seed) to ensure that Nigella (Love-in-a-Mist) becomes naturalised in my garden – unsuccessfully until this year, and I am pleased to say I now have many self-sown seedlings.

    I will pot up a few of these, along with other bonus plants from my garden, ready for the gardening club plant sale in May.

    Self-sown Nigella seedlings in my garden. Photo: Tina Sutton

    Next month, on Tuesday 19 April, sees the club’s annual general meeting at Reepham Town Hall at 7.30 pm, followed at 7.45 pm by Ellen Mary, who will tell us about “Plants and Nature for Wellbeing”, which should prove interesting, even though I think we already know that plants and nature help our physical and mental well-being.

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