All these are in flower in the Old Pond Garden and Peace Garden, they just take a bit of hunting for at this time of year! Come and visit and see what else you can find – the gardens are open from 4 January 2022. 10am-4pm Monday to Friday.
Our members gardens are clearly still going strong, with lots to pick from and show off in this mild winter weather.
In a fit of New Year zeal, we started (note that I said ‘started’) a bit of a clear-up of what for want of a better word you might call ‘stuff’. Out of this stuff emerged some old family photographs, reminding me that I should organise them a bit better and finally get around to finding out more about the people featured in them, adding to sometimes unreliable family tales. Those with subscriptions to Ancestry or other genealogical databases will know immediately what’s coming: I was soon addicted.
What might this sorry story have to do with horticulture? Bear with me, please.
Amongst the stuff were box-loads of index cards recording research material that we had produced literally decades ago in pre-Google times. The purpose of the research was to compile a database of British and Irish Journalists – at least that task was accomplished and published!- and my Ancestry addiction offered the chance to do a bit of editing.
Here we reach the point of this post. Among the information gleaned from the records of the Society of Women Journalists at the British Library and other sources was a biographical sketch of Helen Colt, a fellow of the RHS. In the 1911 census Helen Ann Mary Colt, of 4 Priory Court Mansions, Mazenod Avenue, West Hampstead, gave her occupation as ‘jobbing gardener’. Indeed the project had already noted one of her appearances in print on the subject:
Woman’s Platform, interviewed on jobbing gardening as a career for women, March 1912.
Continue reading CoincidencesI have just come across The Meaning of Liff, a satirical dictionary by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, published in 1983. In it is listed:
Trispen, n., A form of intelligent grass. It grows a single tough stalk and makes its home on lawns. When it sees the lawnmower coming, it lies down and pops up again after it has gone by.
The Meaning of Liff, by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd
I wonder what this might look like?
Yes, it’s that time of year again, when everyone asks you what your New Year resolutions are. The magazines and papers are full of good ideas, here are some I’m going to copy:
Don’t fence me in:
There are 22 million gardens in the UK, so they are very important for our wildlife – as long as they can get in and out! Fences are a barrier to many mammals, reptiles and even some insects, but if all those gardens had little gaps between the fences (or better still fences replaced with hedges) wildlife could move freely between them all and biodiversity would increase.
Kick the peat habit for good:
Continue reading The New Gardening YearWreath making and decorating this week. Our upcycled pallet makes a great Christmas Tree!
The volunteers wish everyone a very Happy Christmas!
Guy has sent in this picture of his Pyracantha, trained over many years, to give some much needed Autumn colour. Not to mention bird food later on!
Sue’s Paperwhites are popping up, in time for Christmas, fingers crossed.
Winter is coming, it’s all still very beautiful!
Removing the green hazel, making an enormous hole and then replanting with a bronze one! It will all be worth it.
Removing the ivy on the walls is going to be more of a long term project. Look at that wonderful brick work though.
On the latest RHS gardening update I have just read that, according to Sally Nex, the more plants you grow the more carbon your garden can store away, which is therefore another way of helping to create a more sustainable environment.
This suits my gardening philosophy just fine!
I am so often tempted at plant fairs to buy another addition for my garden, but often without any clear idea of where the plant will go. (And how wonderful to be able to buy plants at the Chelsea Flower Show this year!) Now the idea of packing yet more in makes me feel positively heroic!
Vija
A proper Show Table again, at last! We had a very respectable 18 entries this month. Who would have believed November could be this colourful?
Charlton and Blackheath Amateur Horticultural Society 