Class 15 (‘photograph of a display of plants on a table’) in our recent Flower, Fruit and Vegetable Show revealed a lovely variety of interpretations again this year (see last year’s tables for further inspiration). All are expressions of nature’s bounty, whether displaying the fruits – and flowers – of the summer’s labours or the exciting potential of seeds and cuttings. Indoors or outdoors, many choose to display tender plants in containers, enabling easy frost-protection later in the year.
Every home should have at least one Pelargonium and, once you have one, you will most definitely want more. There is something so uplifting when seeing a Pelargonium in a pot, whether it’s flowering or not. Some can flower from early spring until the early frosts, but September, to my mind, is the month when many come into their own, generally sending out multiple flowering shoots to delight the eye. But they are all regarded as tender and should be brought indoors before the first frost of the season.
The following plants are in Vija’s garden, enjoying the present sunshine, amongst her table displays.
Continue reading Plant of the Month: Pelargonium (September 2026)The 2026 Autumn ‘Flower, Fruit and Vegetable Show’ was held on Monday 21 September in the Old Library at Charlton House.
This is a photo-heavy post so some will display quite small – just click on the images to see at full size.
This year, after such extreme drought and high temperatures, the committee was concerned that entries might be few and far between. Of course, these fears were unfounded as the members came up trumps again, showing entries rich in variety, creativity, colour and quality. In fact, resident potato-weigher Hugh said that there were more entries to the potato competition than ever before. There were slightly fewer entries in total than last year, though that fact was not evident in the bounteous appearance of the tables, and might simply be down to a few of our veteran showers being unavoidably absent.
Continue reading Autumn Flower, Fruit and Vegetable Show 2026Wild about Weeds: Garden Design with Rebel Plants,
by Jack Wallington (2020)
Weeds: The Story of Outlaw Plants,
by Richard Mabey (2010)
Here are two books about weeds, one by a long-established nature writer, the other by a current garden designer and garden writer, and each has a very different way of approaching their subject. The theme of ‘rebels’ and ‘outlaws’ is common to both, as the longer subtitle of Mabey’s book illustrates: ‘How vagabond plants gatecrashed civilisation and changed the way we think about nature’. Strong words!
Continue reading Books review: Weeds
1. Keep cutting or dead heading your Dahlias to keep the flowers coming, hopefully into October. Give them a weekly feed too.
2. It’s not too late to make some comfrey tea to feed your plants and veg. Just cut up handfuls of leaves and leave in a bucket with some water and a weight to hold it down. Try to cover the bucket as the smell is very unpleasant, then dilute 1/10 in water and aim at the base of plants you are trying to keep going.
3. I think this year we need to carry out a review of very dry areas in our gardens and replant with drought tolerant plants. If you made the visit to Beth Chatto her dry garden is an excellent example. I have a bank at the back of my garden and half of it looks very sad or even dead so I’ll be replanting some of it in the spring if things don’t come through.
Continue reading Pat’s 10 jobs for September 2026
Last Friday, a full coach of CABAHS members took another trip to Essex, this time to see Beth Chatto’s Plants and Gardens. The last group visit was in 2021 and the irony of visiting a world-famous dry garden in torrential rain was not lost on those who attended then. A heavy downpour on Friday’s journey made us wonder if we might be reliving the experience, but it was brief and our whole visit was dry.
Most well-known is the Gravel Garden, which was developed in the 1990s on the former car park – at a high point in the gardens which, in Essex, are in one of the driest parts of the country. But the site has a much more varied topography and ecology than just the dry garden. Much of the site was actually boggy and Beth and Andrew Chatto carved ponds in the lowest areas. This meant that we saw green, green lawns in an area – the Water Garden – where the water table, even after this summer drought, is high.
The weather was forecast to be wet and possibly stormy, so we travelled with raincoats and umbrellas and extra layers of clothes. As it turned out, the weather was hot and sunny – a perfect day for garden visiting.
Unlike some other gardens, including many of our own, Dixter was full of colour and a profusion of planting. Nathaniel Lloyd and Edwin Lutyens had had the foresight to install a reservoir when the gardens were first built and this has served them well. The gardening team have focussed watering on new planting and stressed areas, which has clearly been a successful strategy. The intensively gardened areas like the Long Border have been watered end to end four times since January and the effects of this can be seen in the photos below.
Long-flowering, no-fuss species/varieties are ever so handy to have in our gardens, especially roses and climbers, which I’ve not watered at all this summer – a big bonus! One of these, Solanum ‘Crèche du Pape’, probably purchased 16-17 years ago, is such a plant – no trouble at all and flowering for months at a time. I wouldn’t be without it.
Last weekend I visited Andrew Salter’s garden near Canterbury in Kent (@big_drewland on Instagram). Having announced the open garden date a mere three weeks into the drought, he then considered postponing / cancelling by the time another rainless, hot month had passed. I am very glad he did not, as even drought-scorched, crispy and hot, the place bewitched me.
Continue reading Andrew Salter’s Barn Garden
It was a pleasure to welcome Selina Ozanne to our August meeting to hear about her work as Head Gardener for The Exchange, Erith, a community led arts and craft organisation based in the town’s former Carnegie library.
The refurbished listed building is now home to craft production workshops, a cafe and shop, along with a varied programme of community events.
The Exchange gardens were designed by Chelsea Gold medal winner Sarah Price. The site has various challenges from a sloping roadside front garden exposed to sun and wind from the Thames, to a woodland-edge rear garden with a steep incline. Sarah’s design pulls together these diverse elements together using sustainable materials and matrix planting to make the garden flow coherently in a way that everyone can access.
