Meeting Sunday 19th November

Our next meeting is this Sunday 19th November, please note the start time is 10.30am. Starting with our AGM which we expect to last approximately 1/2 an hour followed by refreshments.

Our speaker this month is Simon White – ‘Rose Growing Made Easy’

Simon is Garden Centre Manager at Peter Beale’s Roses with over 39 years experience in growing the nations favourite flower The Rose.

” I have a passion for the rose and would like to share this passion with others. The late Peter Beales started the rose nursery in 1968 and started to specialize in the old fashioned style of shrub rose and climbers and Ramblers. Today we list over 1100 different varieties which is possibly the largest collection of roses grown commercially in the world with over 250 which are unique to us and can’t be purchased anywhere else in the world. We have over 2.5 acres of display gardens at our nursery and Garden Centre in Attleborough Norfolk where we showcase most of our collection combined with a vast selection of perennials, shrubs and clematis.”

We look forward to seeing you there.

Meeting Sunday 15th October 2023

Our next meeting is this Sunday 15th October at Wickham Bishops Village hall. The meeting starts at 2.00pm.

Our lecture this month is by Geoff Hodge subject ‘Gardening in Drought Conditions’.

Geoff is a freelance garden writer, writing for various national gardening magazines and websites – as well as lots more besides! Previously, he was the Web Editor for the Royal Horticultural Society, Gardening Editor of Garden News magazine and Technical Editor of Garden Answers magazine. He has written eight gardening books, with titles ranging from pruning and propagation to allotments and vegetable growing. He broadcasts on the gardening programmes on both BBC Radio Cambridgeshire and BBC Essex. He also appears on Q&A panels at flower shows across the country and gives lots of talks and demonstrations at garden centres and for gardening clubs.

Meeting Sunday 17th September

Our lecture this month is by Tim Walker subject ‘Scent in the Garden’.

Our first meeting after the summer break is this Sunday 17th September at Wickham Bishops Village hall. The meeting starts at 2.00pm.

This talk, based on a Gold Medal winning display at the Chelsea Flower Show, looks at not only how to make your garden more fragrant but also why the plants produce these smells in the first place.

Tim read Botany at University College Oxford then worked for two years as a trainee at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden.  He then took a National Certificate in Horticulture at Askham Bryan College York, followed by a one-year traineeship at the Savill Garden Windsor, and 15-months as a diploma student at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. He was awarded a Master of Horticulture by the Royal Horticultural Society of London.

From January 1986 to July 2014 Tim worked at the University of Oxford Botanic Garden & Harcourt Arboretum, firstly as General Foreman, then as Horti Praefectus (from 1988) and finally as Director (from 2002).  Between 1992 & 2000 the OBGHA won 4 gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show London.  In 2009 the Botanic Garden was one of seven Oxford collections to be awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for providing imaginative educational programmes for adults, students, children and the general public, thereby breathing new life into education for people of all ages and enriching their lives.

Since 1986 Tim has been giving lectures to gardening clubs, horticultural societies, Art Societies, WIs, and many other types of group.  He has given more than 2000 talks in Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, North America, and Australia to more than 150,000 people in audiences ranging from 20 to 350.

In 2010 Tim was elected as a Fellow of the Linnaean Society of London.

From August 2014 he has been a lecturer in Plant Sciences at Somerville College, Oxford, and now holds similar positions at Pembroke College and Hertford College.

Following the lecture there will be tea, cake and plant sales. We look forward to seeing you all there.