plant sale – Charlton and Blackheath Amateur Horticultural Society

Plant Sale and Community Day 2023

THANK YOU to everyone who supported our Plant Sale and Community Day on May 21st at Charlton House. Whether you donated plants or bought them, you are all heroes! Your generosity will help the Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice, the Walled Gardens and our speaker programme, with many thanks!

OPG in morning light — The garden first thing, looking beautiful and calm..

Set up started early, we had sooo many plants to get out to the Back Lawn, and all the tables to position according to Mandy’s Grand Plan.

11 am rolled around quickly and the selling started..

Selling plants — I’ll have that one, and that one, and

We shared the day with lots of community groups as well as stalls from the Producers Market and everyone had a great time networking and selling their wares.

Spring at Exbury Gardens, Hampshire

A visit to Exbury Gardens in the week between two May Bank Holidays was a treat for the senses. I last visited after the summer drought and before the winter storms and asked myself, ‘how would everything look?’ In short, everything looked thrillingly fresh.

There have been some losses, which, while regrettable, have provided opportunities to the gardeners to open up views, plant new (drought-resistant) species and create entirely new gardens.

Preparing for our Plant Sale and Community Day 2023

Sunday May 21st from 11 am – date for your diary!

Our annual plant sale takes place on the back lawn at Charlton House on Sunday May 21st and this year it promises to be our biggest (and best?) yet. We are being joined by Blackheath & Greenwich WI as usual, with their scrumptious cakes and savouries. The following groups will be there, and perhaps a few more!

The Charlton Society, Charlton Community Gardens, Charlton Toy Library, Blackheath Flower Arranging Club, Friends of Charlton Park, Friends of Greenwich Park, St George’s Garrison Church Woolwich, Charlton Central Residents Association and Neighbourhood Watch, Charlton Neighbourhood Forum, Repurpose Silvertown Tunnel and Charlton House Beekeepers

On top of this, stalls from the Producers Market will be there, with face painting and hot food, Frilly’s cafe will be open and you can view the brand new “Ottoman Journeys” exhibition in Charlton House. https://www.greenwichheritage.org/events/ottoman-journeys-life-and-afterlife-in-greenwich/

St Luke’s Church will be open, you can climb the tower to see the panoramic views and the wonderful Millenium tapestry will be on display too. You can download the poster here, please share it widely.

Bunnies in the Beds 2023

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.

Horn Fair

Charlton House held another very successful Horn Fair on Sunday 16th October and CABAHS contributed to that with a range of opportunities for adults and children. We focused on the Old Pond Garden, with a Spooky Spider, Bat and Pumpkin trail for the children, and well-attended tours by Head Gardener Jason Sylvan who explained the work he is leading with the volunteers there. Just outside the Peace Garden, we held one of our famous plant stalls – it was as popular as ever! Here are some photographs of all the activities.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to its success.

Lynda

Horn Fair Sunday Oct 16th

We will have our usual stall at the Horn Fair at Charlton House this Sunday, October 16th, from 11am. This year we will be outside in the gardens, by the Peace Garden gate – hopefully in some lovely Autumnal sunshine!

Members have been very generous with their plant donations and we also have some great plants grown on by the Volunteers in the walled gardens. As well as plants, there will be lavender bags (from the Peace Garden), and seeds for sale, as well as some Notecards featuring the Old Pond Garden, painted by local artist Amabel Barlow. https://www.amabelbarlow.online/my-portfolio-1

Head Gardener Jason Sylvan will be running tours of the garden on the hour from 12, there will be loads of activities for kids including Bouncy Castles, Autumn crafts with Montessori Moments, and our very own Spooky Spider Bat and Pumpkin trail.

Volunteers getting ready for Horn Fair and Spider trail — GETTING READY!

Frilly’s cafe, plus loads of street food, dance and music performances, Morris men and Artisan and Producers Markets. See RGHT website for full details: https://www.greenwichheritage.org/events/horn-fair-2022/

In addition, St Luke’s Church will be open (it is their patron saint St Luke’s day after all.) If you can visit the Church tower, this is highly recommended, the views are incredible!

Kathy

Sussex Prairie Gardens

The Sussex Prairie Garden is a six acre garden with naturalistic planting, created by Paul and Pauline McBride, who worked with Piet Oudolf some years ago. The garden is on a farm and surrounded by oak trees, featuring a wide range of herbaceous perennials, Veronicastrums, Thalictrums, Persicarias, Sanguisorbas, Kniphofias and Hemerocallis. Huge drifts of ornamental grasses and Asters extend the season of interest hugely. In addition to the planting in the borders there are some massive pots beautifully planted up with huge salvias, Melianthus Major and splendid Pelargonium Tomentosum. The expansive beds are planned with winding rough paths to allow visitors to wander through, brushing grasses and Heleniums as they pass. It is definitely a garden for a late summer visit and seems to have managed remarkably well through this hot summer of 2022.

The plant fair on the day of our visit was spread out through the garden and accompanied by a band and stalls selling refreshments. It had a decidedly festive air! There are dozens of varieties of Miscanthus, Panicums, Molinias, Sporobolis and Penisetum and several of the plant stalls capitalize on this by selling a good selection of grasses.

Beds of mixed grasses and herbaceous perennials

The garden is at its best in late summer and into the autumn as might be expected from the nature of the plants. I have visited earlier in the year when there is far less to see.

The planting is bold and on a grand scale, not much of it less than a metre tall, but for anyone interested in growing prairie type plants or simply just interested, this is a garden well worth visiting.

Vija

Plant Sale and Community Day at Charlton House on Sunday May 22nd

Thank you to everyone who came to our Plant Sale and Community Day at Charlton House on Sunday May 22^nd, what a fabulous day, sunny and successful! Plants were either donated by members or grown on by the Volunteers in the Old Pond Garden. We were slightly staggered by how popular our plants were, and we had pretty well sold out by 1pm, which was amazing. Everyone was very generous, either buying plants or donating for our home made lavender bags, or the Discovery Trail.

Our Community event was shared with Charlton Community Garden, who ran the “Pot up a plant” stall, Blackheath Flower Arranging club, Friends of Greenwich Park, The Charlton Society, Montessori Moments, Greenwich Music School and the Charlton Toy Library. And of course the Greenwich & Blackheath WI cake stall.

We were very pleased to be part of the Trusts “Sustainability Sunday”, it was certainly lively and great to see so much going on. The Producers Market was on the Front Lawn, there were tours of the House, talks about Heritage and garden tours with our very own Head Gardener, Jason Sylvan. Frilly’s café was open and the Old Library had items from the Greenwich Archive on display as well as installations by local artists Fiona Veacock and CraftA, and other childrens activities.

Funds raised from plant sales will go to the Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice, our Speaker programme and the Walled Gardens revival. Thank you all!

Purchase from Plant Stall at Community Day May 2022

Discovery Trail clue at Community Day May 2022

Kathy

Plant Sale and Community Day

We are very pleased to be running our Plant Sale and Community Day again, on Sunday May 22nd from 11 am. This year, we will be part of the Charlton House event Sustainability Sunday, so lots of other exciting things will be going on too. Put it in your diary now! More details to come, but as well as plants and cakes for sale there will be lots of children’s activities including our popular Discovery Trail around the grounds and crafts to make. As well as the Horticultural Society, you can find out what lots of other local groups are up to. Look forward to seeing you there!

Did you ‘Follow the Carrots’ for Easter Bunnies, Plants and a Gorgeous Garden?

Thank you to everyone who came to last Sunday’s ‘Bunnies in the Beds’ and open garden at Charlton House. The ‘Follow the Carrots’ signs worked out a treat, and lots of small people arrived at the Peace Garden ready to find the Easter Bunnies and claim their prize. We gave it an International twist this year, after finding out how other countries celebrate Easter. So as well as Bunnies, the children had to find eg a Bilby from Australia, a Witch from Sweden, and some Willow sticks & feathers from Finland. No-one could really miss the kites (Bermuda) and we had a set of beautiful eggs from Ukraine to find too.

Follow the Bunnies sign — Follow those carrots!

Here they come! Queues for the trail, and let the Hunt begin..

The kites from Bermuda, representing Jesus rising up to heaven.

The day included a successful plant sale too, and Blackheath Flower Arranging Club joined us for a bit of promotion. Not to mention the Producers Market and Frilly’s cafe open all day.

Thank you everyone, these are wonderful gardens in which to hold an event!