bedding plants – Charlton and Blackheath Amateur Horticultural Society

Have you been to Beckenham Place Park lately?

Signpost in Beckenham Place Park, April 2024

Not too far away (and on the 54 bus route from Charlton and Blackheath!) lies a ‘new’ old park: Beckenham Place Park. The name can be confusing – it lies on the border between the London Boroughs of Bromley and Lewisham, but is run by Lewisham Council. It is larger than you might think, at 96 hectares (well over 200 acres), and stretches from Beckenham Hill railway station in the north to Ravensbourne railway station in the south, west into Beckenham ‘proper’ and east toward Bromley.

Beckenham Place Park information sign (2024) — Park map with trails: download

Beloved of dogwalkers, wild swimmers, park runners, bluebell spotters and vintage shoppers, since Heritage Lottery Funding was awarded in 2016 there have been many changes and a huge increase in community use. Old features of the 18^th century estate have been brought back, playgrounds added and the 1762 mansion (which was formerly a golf club house with a small visitor centre) is now home to artists’ studios, a café, a vintage shop and hosts multiple events.

But to the gardens…

January 2025 Talk: Succession Planting for a Long Season

Our first meeting of 2025 was very well attended. The speaker and the topic obviously attracted a good audience. The Show Table received a good selection of displays, with Jean’s a worthy winner of Best on the Table.

Our speaker, Fergus Garrett, the highly influential plantsman and horticulturalist, has been Head Gardener at the internationally acclaimed Great Dixter Garden in Northiam, East Sussex since 1993 and is the CEO of the Great Dixter Charitable Trust. He gave an excellent, wide-ranging talk on how to keep our gardens looking vibrant and spectacular all the year round. He explained how to plant for a long flowering season with plants co-existing in one place, but performing at different times. He used photographs of the spectacular gardens at Great Dixter to illustrate his points. He said Great Dixter had the advantage of scale and greenhouses but it is possible to scale down what they do at Great Dixter and use their scheme in our own gardens with minimal labour.

He particularly used the magnificent long border at Great Dixter as an example of how to plan a long flowering season. How to use structural under-planting, interlaying and interplanting with bulbs, self-sowers, perennials, clumps of bedding plants and climbers.

Pat’s Jobs for September 2024

1. Start ordering your bulbs now as all the bulb catalogues are arriving – though prices don’t stop going up!

2. Start planting bulbs when they arrive but save your tulips until later as they are prone to virus and rotting, and to theft by squirrels.

3. Divide large established clumps of perennials by cutting back first, then splitting either by hand or with two forks back to back. Delay if soil is heavy or too wet.

Split established clumps of perennials — Order Spring Bulbs

4. Replace tired summer bedding in pots and replant for winter and replenish with fresh compost.

Bedding Plant dilemma

I love Greenwich Park Flower garden and am full of admiration for how their gardeners have gradually adapted, from growing all their plants on site to whatever combination of outsourcing they use nowadays. It usually looks wonderful.

I understand it is a public garden and has to cover those who like the bedding plant tradition, those who expect a wow factor and those who want a bit of modern style.

But the current drought has really highlighted the bedding plant issue!

It is eye-catching for all the wrong reasons, little oases of green with the rest of the park straw-dry.

Even traditionalists must wonder what on earth the point is of pouring water on these beds of Impatiens. There are other beds containing tree ferns and perennials and it absolutely makes sense to water expensive plants that will come back and cope in a (hopefully) more normal future year.

This is a personal viewpoint, not necessarily representative of the CABAHS membership, it would be interesting to hear members views..? Perhaps it’s a debate we can have at the Gardeners Question Time meeting on August 15th!

Bedding plant beds and dry around them — Bedding plants, looking a bit daft

Trees stressed by drought in Greenwich Park — Bedding plants, looking a bit daft

Kathy A