Congratulations to all our entrants, spectators and winners at our 46th annual Spring Show! Despite lots of comments like ” I have nothing left, the snails have had everything” it’s clear CABAHS members rise to a challenge as we had 80 entries in total. Monday evening was a great opportunity to show off our collective gardening skills, as well as have another little trip down memory lane about Shows of the past.
The Pipit competition – a definite challenge this year!
Kathy covered the origin of the Spring Shows at last year’s meeting, with the first one held in 1978, and as a result of that research we resurrected two new classes – a Primulas & Auriculas class and a Baking class. They were well received, with 5 and 8 entries respectively.
Mention has to be made of Mandy’s wonderful shortbread shapes – the wheelbarrow filled with chocolate earth was apparently Brownie’s contribution!
1. Prune hardy fuchsias now both in pots and in the ground to promote new growth and to prevent the plants from becoming too woody.
2. Plant out pot grown sweet peas now making sure to pinch out the shoots to promote bushy plants. You can also sow directly in the ground now if you didn’t sow earlier but watch out for slugs munching new seedlings.
3. Someone said the other day that they hadn’t cut back their clematis but I don’t think its too late as the growth on them is phenomenal. It just means they will flower a bit later but then that extends the season.
Pat’s unpruned clematis already at the top of the arch!Pat’s cosmos seedlings – germinated in under a weekPat’s Cosmos flowers
Our “Bunnies in the Beds” Easter Trail took place on Saturday (April 6th) for the fourth year running, it is becoming a fabulous fixture of the Garden Volunteers year. We start thinking up mad ideas in January during tea breaks, then gradually whittle them down to create an exciting but practical trail.
This year, the Bunnies went on an egg hunt with a difference! Having found all the eggs they then had to match them to their parent animal, in order to collect a prize. And by the end of the day, 175 children had achieved their goal. There were birds eggs to find of course, but also frogs, snakes, sand lizard, moths and even a dinosaurs egg!
Also on offer: Potting Up Table with free seeds, courtesy of RHS Britain in Bloom which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. We were not expecting this to be so popular and almost ran out of seeds! So many small gardeners-in-the-making came to this event, it was lovely. If you are growing your seeds on, you can keep track how others are doing on social media on @RHS GrassRoots and #RHSBloom60.
We hope you enjoy a spring walk around the walled gardens at Charlton House! Look out for:
Forsythia
Forsythia is in the olive family, renowned for its vibrant yellow flowers which appear in spring, long before the leaves unfurl. The one by the Charlton House stables is quite old and we are not sure of the exact variety. We pruned it back hard a year ago and it seems to have loved it!
Cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus)
A ‘background’ evergreen plant most of the year, but quite striking when the white candle flowers appear in Spring. Although we call it a laurel, it actually isn’t – it’s in the cherry family! We know that an early resident of Charlton House, Elizabeth Puckering, introduced cherry laurels to the gardens. She was friendly with the diarist John Evelyn, who lived in Deptford at the time, and exchanged cuttings with him in around 1654.
Daffodil (Narcissus ‘Thalia’)
A fragrant and vigorous trumpet daffodil which is now in it’s third year in the walled gardens, so has formed some nice big clumps. It starts off creamy yellow and fades to white, and is sometimes referred to as an orchid daffodil. For fans of BBC Gardener’s World on TV, you might recognise it from Monty Don’s writing garden!
Brunnera has lovely heart-shaped, silvery-veined leaves that look as if frost has touched them. The leaves light up shady areas of the garden. It has long lasting, bright blue flowers that look very much like forget-me-nots, and which provide lots of nectar and pollen for visiting bees.
Wood spurge (Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae)
Wood spurge is in the Euphorbia family, so take care! If the stems are broken, they gush with a thick milky latex substance that can cause blisters on skin. They are handsome perennial plants, shade loving, with zingy lime-green flowers in late Spring and rosettes of glossy dark green leaves. Another name for this plant is ‘Mrs Robb’s Bonnet’ – we would like to see the hat that inspired that name!
Still going strong, winter into spring!
Lenten rose (Helleborus orientalis)
The Lenten Rose is a perennial flowering plant and is part of the Buttercup family, so not a rose at all! Its common name comes from the fact it usually flowers between Ash Wednesday and Easter – the period known as Lent. Hellebores (Lenten roses) can be white,
Primrose (Primula vulgaris)
We grow the English or ‘common’ primrose in the walled gardens, which is the natural pale yellow one that gives its name to the colour Primrose. It is often one of the earliest plants to flower in Spring (the Latin word ‘prima’ means first). Early butterflies like the Brimstone benefit from its nectar. Plants will hybridise (cross) very easily with the garden bedding Primulas that come in lots of different bright colours, so seedlings can come up a surprising colour!
A few weeks back Vija and I went to one of the open days at Sarah Raven’s farm Perch Hill in East Sussex. The preceding evening had seen torrential rain and an email arrived on the morning of the visit warning people of the muddy conditions and that a four wheel drive was essential. And they weren’t exaggerating… the field we were to park in was a mud slide with a tractor towing cars out of the mud!
But the rain hadn’t affected the garden. The tulips, many of which were in pots,were stunning with the same colours used repeatedly throughout the garden. They were well labelled so we could make a note of them and there seemed to be loads of new varieties and quite a lot in oranges and shades of reds. There were lots of pots with pastel shades too and it wasn’t just tulips. There was a whole bed planted with a tall variety of fritillary which you don’t see very often and is certainly different.
Additionally there were displays in pots of some lovely frilly violas and the glasshouse was planted with ranunculus and other early varieties of annuals. There were displays of early vegetables but they were small and obviously affected by the cold spring. And the tea and cakes were good too!
All in all a stunning display and worth a visit despite the mud and flooded roads.
Petersham HouseVegetable gardenYew hedges and wall beds
A group of CABAHS members enjoyed a visit to Petersham House recently, open for one day under the National Garden Scheme. It was a bit of a challenge that the day chosen was that of the London Marathon, but everyone made it on time to meet at Cannon Street station. The crowds were mostly going the other way and very friendly!
The 17th century house near Richmond was bought by the Boglione family in 1997, and turned into a family home next to their renowned Petersham Nurseries. The gardens have a long walk, large borders set into yew hedging against the walls, topiary and a kitchen garden. The tulip displays were beautiful! Despite the drizzly weather, members had a great time wandering around before decamping to the tea rooms at the Nursery.
Well, as we now know from a trawl through the CABAHS archive, our first Spring Show took place in April 1978, when the entries were recorded as “good considering the wintry conditions”. 45 years later, in 2023, our display has once again risen above the challenging weather and looked frankly fabulous!
Best in Show Flowering ShrubsVase of Spring Flowers
Thank you to everyone who carried their exhibits into St Thomas’ Church hall, we had more entries than in the past few years, 73 in total, and everyone seemed to have a great evening. Our judge Mrs Norma Leslie said she had a hard time choosing the winners, listed below. Best in Show was awarded to Sharon’s “Perfect Pot of Pipits”, well deserved, and it was good to see so many entries in this class. The Wild Card class generated a lot of conversations around the range of entries, so that will be a fixture from now on. The short talk about past shows sparked some good ideas for future classes, such as one for Primroses and Auriculas and perhaps we can revive a “Domestic” class to add a baking angle to the evening (followed by some munching probably).
Easter bunnies arrived early this year at Charlton House & Gardens. On the Sunday before Easter, ten vegetable loving bunnies hid themselves along with their favourite vegetables in the flower beds of the Gardens and were ready to be found by young visitors to this joint CABAHS & RGHT event. The morning’s chilly weather did not seem to deter the children who all enthusiastically scoured the Old Pond Garden and the Peace Garden.
Once they had found all ten and identified each bunny’s favourite vegetable they were encouraged to sow some radish seeds as part of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Big Seed Sow https://www.rhs.org.uk/get-involved/big-seed-sow . They could also learn about ‘the Secret Life of the Pea’ and choose some seeds to take home with them. Some even made their own origami seed packets. Fingers crossed we have set some of our visitors on the joyous path to becoming a life-long gardener!
Thankfully the weather was kind: dry with even a spell or two of sunshine during the afternoon. The real live bunnies brought along by Juli were an extra special attraction! By 3 o’clock, around 180 trails had been completed with donations earning a sizeable sum for Charlton House & Gardens. Our Plant Sale also proved an attractive draw and took over £200.
Late April is a great time to remind yourself that spring happens outside of London, and I had the joy of meeting a group of friends in Yorkshire for the Harrogate Flower Show. This is quite a major show, running over 4 days, but it’s not run by the RHS and it has quite different emphases. It does, though, have lots of exhibitors and we enjoyed a full day there, in brilliant sunshine.
First off, we looked at the flower arranging, clearly a major component with several training colleges nearby. There were lots of competition categories, from big set pieces to carefully chosen themes. We admired long-horned cows fashioned from garlands of flowers, and saw a heavy emphasis on arum lilies, which featured on the Best In Show winner, for instance.
By contrast, the show gardens were a very minor element of the event. They were small, commercially-sponsored but not carefully themed, and quite underwhelming. And they had very few people looking at them.
The area for various Societies was dominated by the Daffodil Society Northern Group, where competitors were vying for prizes in nearly 100 categories. The variety of blooms was extraordinary, with a strong emphasis on precision and newly-developed cultivars. Among others, the Yorkshire Bonsai Society was also showing beautiful specimens, as were the National Auricula and Primula Society, the National Dahlia Society, and the West Yorkshire Hardy Plant Society, which won a Premier Gold award for its spectacular display.
Charlton and Blackheath Amateur Horticultural Society 