Thank you to everyone who supported our October plant sale at Charlton House Horn Fair! Whether you helped on a stall, donated plants or bought plants – or all three in many cases – it was a fabulous effort. In addition to the serious and successful business of fund raising, everyone seemed to have fun, meet new people (maybe new members or volunteers..!) and of course, talk about plants.
On a very hot Friday in July we set off on a CABAHS coach trip to Saffron Waldon in Essex, to visit Audley End House and Gardens.
The Audley End site was originally a Benedictine monastery, but following the Dissolution of the Monasteries the land was acquired by Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk between 1604 and 1612, who built a very grand house on the site on a par with a royal palace. It has been altered and added to throughout the years, and the grounds were originally designed by Launcelot ‘Capability’ Brown in the usual parkland style of the time, together with a temple in the distance.
Our group decided to visit the Parterre first at the side of the house. There were beautifully shaped beds and lovely planting just humming with bees, hoverflies and butterflies. Plants included lavenders, Nepeta, day lilies and Phlomis which were being watered in the very hot sun.
Continue reading A Trip to Audley EndIt wasn’t all that “fair” this year, in fact it was fairly wet, but we had such a great day! So many volunteers and visitors turned out to support this traditional event, thank you so much everyone. As well as a huge number of plants for sale, we also had fun with the Gargoyle Trail in the Gardens, which were specially dressed up and Haunted for the day!
Inside Charlton House there were lots of craft and artisan stalls, Frilly’s was open and there were food stalls on the back lawn. The Heritage Hub featured the Ottoman stone and some interesting watercolours of Charlton House over the years. Local community groups had stalls in the Grand Salon and St Luke’s was open for tower tours. Spotlight Dance group and the Morris Dancers were on show as well.
The gardens looked beautifully Autumnal and we had over 85 children and their families charging about looking for bats, gargoyles, pumpkins and spiders!
Highlight of the day was the Splat the Slug game, all ages had a go!
Continue reading Horn Fair 2024Christopher Lloyd loved colour, and as I stand on the upper pathway of the Sunk Garden, here at Great Dixter, I notice the pops of colour from the spires of pink-purple Lythrum and terracotta-orange Crocosmia all around me.
Designed by Nathaniel Lloyd, Christopher Lloyd’s father, after WW1, this south-facing and sheltered sunken garden is enclosed by two barns, a magnificent yew hedge and a wall on the southern boundary, thus creating its own micro-climate and the plants love it!
In all the years I have been visiting Sissinghurst Castle, I have never seen the White Garden look so lush; it was a ‘sea of white fluffiness’ and its loveliness took one’s breath away.
The White Garden is an enclosed garden, laid out in a formal pattern, with clipped borders of box framing brick herringbone pathways, punctuated by box cubes. These features provide structure and act as a framework and a contrast to the white flowers and grey foliage within their boundaries.
The focal point is the central gazebo, which is covered by the highly fragrant white rambler rose (Rosa mulliganii) – now finished flowering but later in the year produces rose hips. Beneath sits a maroon-coloured waist-high urn (1930s), planted with Thumbergia alata (a cream-coloured Black-eyed Susan).
Continue reading White Garden, Sissinghurst Castle
Thank you to all our volunteers, members and local residents who donated plastic bottle bases over the past year – look what we did with them! It might not be quite Tower of London level, but our poppy cascade makes a great “Stop and Remember” point on your walk around the park this week.
We also added some to the Peace Garden gates.
Kathy
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
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.
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
At the AGM a year ago, I nervously stood in front of the packed Long Gallery at Charlton House and gave a talk about the Old Pond Garden walled garden.
The Society has been meeting once a month at Charlton House for over 30 years, and yet a large proportion of our members (myself included until a couple of months prior to that) had no idea the walled gardens existed. Local Charlton members knew of course, but our membership is drawn from a wide area of South East London, so this was news for many of them.
We proposed that a volunteer scheme should be set up to help renovate and maintain the gardens, since the RBG gardeners were too stretched to do more than trim and mow. We had the support of Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust, and with their help had applied for some funding from the Greenwich Neighbourhood Growth Fund.
But it was a bit of a leap of faith- CABAHS has only ventured into volunteering once in its history, back in the 1990’s, when members helped run the garden and greenhouse at Greenwich Hospital. So in February we launched the volunteer scheme in the garden, on the weekend of Storm Dennis, with our carefully prepared flyers flying about everywhere, and everyone taking a quick look at the garden and running for cover (and coffee and cakes) in the House. But apart from the weather it was a success as we had 34 interested people sign up on the spot.
The volunteers started work very enthusiastically on a lovely sunny Sunday in late February, tackling the early weeds and brimming with ideas of what should stay, go or could be donated from their own gardens. So many discussions about what is a weed, whether the giant Phormiums should be kept, and whether forget-me-nots are invasive! We developed an Old Pond Garden committee, to administer and run the scheme (and deal with the interesting Health & Safety issues– eg don’t eat the plants). Volunteer sessions were very well attended, even as the nastier weather set in, and a tea and homemade cake routine developed alongside the weeding.
While enjoying our time in the garden, of course world events were catching up with us and we had to close the scheme on March 21st as the first Covid-19 Lockdown hit.
During that first Lockdown, the weather decided to become unseasonably hot, which was nice for all of us stuck at home, but totally fried the primroses and snowdrops we had planted in the garden. Behind the scenes, the Old Pond Garden committee carried on planning. Melanie and Kay filmed a 2 minute clip of the garden for the Greenwich & Bexley Hospice Open Gardens, which raised our profile tremendously and helped with funding for the Hospice.
June 30th and we were back on track! But by now we had even more volunteers, and they included local garden designer Jason Carty. The very professional and lovely planting plan that Jason came up with was quickly adopted and the Volunteers set to with renewed energy and enthusiasm.
After the March-June shortages of compost and seeds, it was great to be able to swap plants again, and the garden became a useful exchange point. We had to add antiseptic hand gel to our Health & Safety rules, but most gardeners wear gloves anyway and we learned all about the importance of hand cream after a grubby planting session! Homemade cakes were replaced with cellophane wrapped biscuits, and work carried on.
By August the garden beds were clear enough to be able to hold a Plant Sale with all plants grown and donated by members (THANK YOU!). There were also displays of the gardens in past times and our plans for the future. The public turned up in droves and we sold out by 2pm. Even the Mayor of Greenwich visited just in time to pick up the last of the plants, and we made over £1,000, for the garden fund and Hospice.
Other creative achievements: Some volunteers cut the remaining lavender in the garden, to dry, and other volunteers made bespoke CABAHS Charlton House Lavender Bags (applying for copyright!) for sale. The old cherry tree stump was dug up, after Herculean effort from David, and made into a wildlife area for the Stag Beetle larvae we disturbed. A leaf store was built, in readiness for Autumn leaf fall, to recycle the goodness back into the garden. A “Grand Designs Luxury Shelter” has been built, unbelievably from old building hoardings though you would never guess, and is now hidden in one corner of the garden. With coat hooks for volunteers’ coats, so practical!
In September we received £6,000 funding from Greenwich Neighbourhood Growth Fund, a huge boost for our planting plans. The committee negotiated a 50% trade discount with Provender Nurseries and went on a shopping spree.
In October we took delivery of a new bench seat, to commemorate CABAHS 70th Anniversary, kindly funded by members subscriptions. We also received interest and some practical help from students from the University of Greenwich Landscape Architecture department. By November the second Lockdown had hit, but this time the weather was being more normal and plants were becoming dormant anyway. We got back to work in December, and carried on planting in the mild weather. There was a wonderful surprise from the Worshipful Company of Gardeners, who awarded us £500 to buy some special plants for the garden (big thank you Melanie for applying!). In the week before Christmas, volunteers fashioned stylish wreath decorations forthe gates from leaves and berries from the garden itself and a socially distanced mince-pie-fest, courtesy Charlton Bakehouse, concluded the year.
January came and brought the Third Lockdown, but the garden is coping fine with two local volunteers a week popping in to check it over. The tree surgeon Amber Treecare paid a longawaited visit in the first week in February to give the garden a haircut. So much better and lighter, with a lot of overgrown Pyracantha removed and the ivy trimmed to the top of the walls. You can see the House properly again!
As we await the vaccine roll out, lots of virtual planning has been going on, with a new application for funds to extend the Volunteer scheme into the Long Borders garden in 2021. We hope to include the fabulous ancient Mulberry Tree enclosure in our care too, keeping it weed and rubbish free. Such a lot to look forward to and be grateful for.
See you in the garden soon, more volunteers always welcome!
Kathy
Grateful thanks to all our Volunteers, and the Old Pond Garden committee: Vija, Terry, Kay, Angela, Mandy, Melanie, Juli and Jason. Also to Tracy, Edward and the staff at Charlton House.
Charlton and Blackheath Amateur Horticultural Society 