• New nature reserve highlights biodiversity and history

    Wednesday, September 17, 2025 - 18:31

    By Victoria Plum

    When I was a child we had Montbretia in the garden; they seem to have morphed into Crocosmia now. I’ve always liked them. A friend gave me some of the very popular, tall, handsome, brilliant-orange variety, wonderfully named Lucifer.

    It does well and someone told me to remove and replant the youngest of the long sausage of disc-shaped corms that develop over time and throw the older ones away. However, I can’t quite bring myself to throw any plant away, so I have just separated and replanted lots of them. I’ll see how many come up next year.

    Wandering around the garden centre with my £5 winning-garden voucher from the Reepham & District Gardening Club show in August burning a hole in my pocket, a different Crocosmia caught my eye.

    I’m not usually drawn to flashy flowers (despite what I’ve just said), but these are just gorgeous. Emily McKenzie is the name of this shorter variety and I’m really pleased with it. I’ve planted it in a different area of the garden to avoid hybridisation.

    Above: Crocosmia Lucifer in my garden. Below: My new Crocosmia Emily McKenzie. Photos: Tina Sutton

    I’ve also sown grass seed to repair the dog damage to the grass area in the back garden, which I laughingly call “the lawn”. (Did you know that laundry is called “laundry” because it used to be laid on the lawn to dry? There is a painting in Felbrigg Hall that illustrates this.)

    I’m leaving the surviving grass to grow a little long in the hope that it stops the pigeons eating the seed, which is what they did in the spring. Autumn, when it’s warm and wet, is always the best time to sow grass seed: less predation and good germination.

    A treat was had at last night’s gardening club meeting with Matt Wickens telling us about the newly created Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Sweet Briar Marshes reserve.

    Situated on our side of the city, this fascinating 90-acre site lies between the River Wensum on one side and Marriott’s Way on the other. You will have driven through it because Sweet Briar Road cuts right through the middle; there is a small connecting bridge underneath the road.

    Historically, the site comprised grazing marshes, mature woodland and arable. The soil types are interesting and various as a result of glaciation and evolution, which enable a wide variety of flora and fauna to flourish.

    This is a valuable site and is proving a useful and popular open space for people living in that area of Norwich as well as for the creatures that are thriving there.

    Please join us on Tuesday 21 October at 7.30 pm in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, and bring your friends to enjoy an illustrated and revealing talk by Wally Webb (a Radio Norfolk blast from the past) who will talk to us about The Broads (I’ll be queueing for his autograph). As aways, tea, coffee and cake, a raffle and friendly chatter, so do come and join us.

  • Homegrown talent continues to shine at summer show

    Thursday, August 21, 2025 - 20:59

    By Victoria Plum

    There was great excitement at the Reepham & District Gardening Club Summer Show this week. Many members brought lots of entries, flowers, fruit and vegetable, and I was thrilled to win the “wild card” category, which can constitute absolutely anything you choose, with my miniature garden.

    This grows in an undrained plant saucer only about 4 cm deep and perhaps 15 cm across. This mini-garden has been growing now for seven or eight years. It stays outside all year, and the soil is poor because I never change it. Naturally, some plants die off or outgrow their position and have to be replaced so the garden evolves over time. (In case you wondered, no dinosaurs were harmed in the care of this garden.)

    Voting at the summer show is democratic; we each vote for the exhibit we think best in each class. And of course there was a quiz, with many howls of anguish at the clever answers we couldn’t get right. Many thanks to the gardening club committee for organising a jolly, light-hearted and amusing evening.

    Above: Voting at the Reepham & District Gardening Club Summer Show. Below: My Petite Nigra figs. Photos: Tina Sutton

    I have a Petite Negra fig. I bought it on a gardening club trip to Reads Nursery at Hales Green about 15 years ago and chose it because it should live happily and fruit well in a pot. It has black figs, though not as prolific as the green, which are just a little bit more delicious.

    It lived in a pot for some time but produced no figs so I allowed it out in to the garden, suitably constrained by concrete slabs. Still no figs, despite doing all the things you should. That was until this year when it produced a handful, delicious of course.

    There’s nothing like meandering round the garden and picking fresh, ripe produce to eat as you wander. I hope my Petite Negra will now go from strength to strength and give us many figs in the years to come; I am an optimistic gardener.

    Tuesday 16 September is the date for the next gardening club meeting. Join us in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, at 7.30 pm for a talk on the exciting new Norfolk Wildlife Trust reserve on the edge of Norwich at Sweet Briar Marshes.

  • The art and science of bonsai

    Thursday, July 17, 2025 - 16:54

    By Victoria Plum

    I really enjoy my garden because I’m always fascinated to see what my plants are doing: what they choose to do, how they cope with the vagaries of the weather, my interventions, insect depredations and soil quality.

    For instance, my alpine garden has been in situ for 14 years, though with some renovation of course, and the poor soil quality has kept the size of plants in check. I also have a tiny miniature garden that I started well before Covid, which still works well for the same reason.

    But in general my main garden is wild territory: everything in it has to look after itself and the way plants cope with the micro-climates always interests me.

    However, at this week’s meeting of the Reepham & District Gardening Club, Mick Hillocks, chairman of the Norfolk Bonsai Association, explained the careful and specific interventions required to turn a normal deciduous tree into a perfect, natural-looking miniature version of itself using a saw and wire, and branch, twig, leaf and root pruning.

    The most bizarre, I thought, was “threading”. For this technique (I’ve never heard of it before) you drill a hole through a branch or trunk and thread a slender, pliable branch from one side of the branch or trunk to come out on the other side. It takes some time for the branch to weld itself to the trunk, a bit like pleaching, I suppose.

    You might do this to balance the look of the tree because there is art as well as science in bonsai. To train a tree takes years. Have I got time for this? In fact, I have to admit that I do rather like bonsai trees; I have killed off my fair share.

    Above: Purple Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) bonsai. Below: Mugo pine (Pinus mugo) bonsai: when the “candles” grow in spring, halve them with fingernails to keep the plant low. Photos: Tina Sutton

    Summer show

    Prepare for excitement at next month’s gardening club meeting in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, for the Summer Show and Social Evening.

    Bring your show entries to compete for stunning prizes. There will be a raffle, a quiz and even a glass of wine, not to mention the chance to chat with friends about the weather and our various garden traumas.

    Note the date: Tuesday 19 August at 7.30 pm, but bring your entries a little earlier to display to best advantage.

    Coming up later

    If you belong to the Norfolk Wildlife Trust you will know about the reserve at Sweet Briar Marshes, close to Norwich city centre.

    We are lucky to have a talk about this new reserve in September, and then in October a talk from Wally Webb who I have heard many times on Radio Norfolk. Bring your friends.

  • The beauty of ruthlessly organised chaos

    Wednesday, June 18, 2025 - 20:58

    By Victoria Plum

    Our last speaker at the Reepham & District Gardening Club told us that he weeded through his garden in the spring and after that his plants would cover the ground and therefore no more weeding is required for quite a while. I aim to do this.

    Two sayings are: “Nature abhors a vacuum” and “The best manure is the farmer’s boot”. If your plants cover the ground there will be no room for weeds (although we know that they are only wildflowers in the wrong place).

    And the farmer’s boot? If you keep a close eye, like a good farmer, on what is going on, you can take swift action to forestall problems.

    I really enjoy the organised chaos that fills my garden at this time of the year but I am trying to keep order.

    White bryony is everywhere and is very pretty. If you saw it for sale in the garden centre, having got past the candles, clothing, birthday cards, random ornaments, prettily packaged fudge and café, to the back of the property where the actual garden plants are, you would buy it.

    Perennial, easy to grow, pretty leaves, flowers and tendrils and gorgeous red berries. Poisonous, so perhaps you wouldn’t buy it, but I would.

    Some years I have left it to grow, but given the chance it takes the mickey, like the pretty bindweed (clue in the name here) and smothers, pulls down and swamps my choice plants. So this year I am pulling it down as soon as I see it; I’m developing a ruthless streak!

    Sadly, at the last minute, our speaker for the gardening club this month was unable to come. This is rare; our excellent speakers are usually very reliable.

    Next month, on Tuesday 15 July at 7.30 pm in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, Mike Hillocks will tell us about bonsai: how to prune, how to maintain and general information. There will be tea and coffee and cake. Bring your friends. Meetings are informal, friendly and always interesting. And there is a raffle.

    I’ll just pop outside to refill the hydroponic Super Gro and sugar solution for my marrow plants because it’s nearly time for the Summer Gardening Club Show in August.

    P.S. Has anyone got a hose that doesn’t leak and twist? If you have, please tell me what sort it is.

    White bryony (the bright green leaves) in my garden. Look closely and you can see the delicate, coiled tendrils. Photo: Tina Sutton

  • Tips for planting a cottage garden

    Thursday, May 22, 2025 - 09:14

    By Victoria Plum

    Nearly 50 people enjoyed a busy Reepham & District Gardening Club meeting this week with the bright and interesting Andrew Sankey talking about cottage gardens and cottage garden plants through the year.

    He gave many helpful tips, including advice to cut your hellebores right down in November so that in spring the flowering stems come first and then the leaves appear without black and grubby foliage; they look best grouped close together to highlight the dark and light flowers.

    Our speaker’s focus, from his experience, was on dry soil or dry shade. (I certainly have dry soil just now!) For a new plant he digs at least double the pot depth, fills the hole with good soil, plants the plant, waters well and then leaves the plant to look after itself. No more watering: the roots should go down and find moisture. If they don’t do this, and die, this is the wrong plant for the situation.

    Andrew emphasised that it is much better to plant what will grow in the conditions you have; it is not sensible to struggle with what won’t cope and is unhappy and difficult. He also gave us a useful list of cottage garden plants associated with his talk.

    Gardening club subscriptions were due this month and the programme of events on my membership card looks excellent and varied as always. (Remember to take your card with you to Woodgate Nursery, Aylsham, to claim a 10% discount off your lovely new plants.)

    Next month, at 7.30 pm on Tuesday 17 June in Reepham Town Hall, Kathy Gray, programme secretary for the Norfolk Plant Heritage Group, will tell us about four very different gardens, featuring the diverse number of plants we can grow.

    I am lucky to have a garden with a damper side (although not at the moment) and a very dry side, so that I can grow a varied mix of plants, and a sheltered area where ferns do really well and where they give me a lot of pleasure. Such beautiful, sculptural shapes, changing as they unfurl.

    Fabulous fern in my garden. Photo: Tina Sutton

  • Bargains galore at annual plant sale

    Thursday, April 17, 2025 - 21:20

    By Victoria Plum

    I’ve been tidying my garden and any self-sown plants or clumps I can split I have potted up for the Reepham & District Gardening Club plant sale in Reepham Market Place from 8.30 am on Saturday 10 May.

    Please bring plants to be sold before 8.30 am on the day or on Friday 9 May in the Bircham Centre from 6–7 pm. Labels are good as we like to know what bargains we are buying.

    This week’s well-attended gardening club AGM went by quickly. Everything was agreed, and our chairman and vice chairman swapped places.

    The wonderful Carol Peakome has been chairman for at least double her initial time commitment and has overseen our many interesting meetings and the vital behind-the-scenes stuff.

    She will now have an easier time as backup to our new chairman, Jeff Johnson, who has been vice chair for a while and also our very capable programme organiser.

    How lucky we are to have such a dedicated and accomplished committee to ensure the smooth running of the club. And what excellent speakers we have to inform and entertain us on the third Tuesday of the month.

     

    Carol Peakome (right) and Jeff Johnson (centre) traded places at the helm of the Reepham & District Gardening Club, pictured here with Martyn Davey (left) holding a “swoe” – a tool he deems very useful. Photo: Tina Sutton

     

    Our speaker for April was Martyn Davey, an experienced and knowledgeable professional gardener, who spoke on vegetable growing with lots of common sense.

    Did you know that tap water is better for seed growing as there are then no slimy moulds from your water butt to rot your seedlings?

    Did you know that the desirable and often quoted 7.5 pH value for soil is best because that allows the most advantageous take-up of available nutrients by your plants?

    Did you know that if you rotavate your soil you will destroy the drainage and aeration tunnels the worms have carefully made for your plants and you will chop up the worms? And you will also chop up the bindweed, Japanese knotweed and couch grass into little bits, all of which will regrow.

    Did you know that one aphid can produce in one year enough aphids to fill a metre-square box? Those are food for many invertebrates and countless birds and their young, so be patient and wait for some other creature to tidy them up, not you. Nature has it all worked out.

    Please join us on Tuesday 20 May at 7.30 pm in Reepham Town Hall, Church Street, to hear Andrew Sankey talk about “A Year in the Life of a Cottage Garden”. He is an entertaining speaker. Could you bring a friend who might enjoy an entertaining evening?

    We look forward to seeing you there, and don’t forget the first gardening club trip of the year to How Hill on Thursday 29 May.

  • The past is there, right where you stand, under your feet

    Thursday, March 20, 2025 - 21:06

    By Victoria Plum

    “It’s not what you find, but what you find out” is a maxim followed by Graeme Simmonds, this month’s speaker at the Reepham & District Gardening Club, who talked about “History beneath your feet”, which includes those little oddments that give us clues about past lives and send us on a path of discovery if we have a curious mind.

    Not so much about exotic gold torcs but small objects, regrettably lost and difficult to replace. (Just one field yielded many coins over a wide span of time, but our speaker would not reveal where this field is!)

    There are mysteries. Many bronze-alloy thimbles are found on fields all around. Graeme showed us a box with perhaps 200 in, and I know a farmer locally who has found many on the fields in Cawston.

    Some are tiny. So perhaps there used to be many people in the past, with very small fingers, sitting in the fields sewing?

    There is another theory. In Tudor times it was legally allowed for the poor to glean the fields after harvest, to pick up the odd grains of corn left behind after harvest; many people depended on this.

    It would have made your fingers sore, rummaging in the soil and stalks for tiny grains, so perhaps you and your children would wear thimbles on several fingers for protection when engaged in this important task. They might get lost as you worked.

    I didn’t give this theory much credence until I remembered that in Tudor times corn was broadcast by hand − no seed drills to provide neat rows until the agricultural revolution and Jethro Tull around 1701, so that randomly placed plants would have been more difficult to work round. So now that theory makes sense to me.

     

    The Gleaners (Des glaneuses), an oil painting completed in 1857 by French painter Jean-François Millet, held in the Musée d’Orsay, in Paris.

     

    Do you belong to the EPT (Earwig Protection Trust)? Hooray for earwigs. Did you know that they eat aphids and are very good mothers? They are omnivores, but particularly enjoy aphids of all sorts, codling moth, leaf rollers, scale insect and psyllids.

    The insecticides you reach for will kill all these things, but earwigs have only one brood per year whereas aphids have many. When you have killed the earwigs with your spray they cannot quickly breed more to consume the aphids, which can rapidly reproduce and resurge later on.

    Dave Goulson, author of The Garden Jungle: or Gardening to Save the Planet, is sceptical of some pollinator-friendly plant lists. He suggests noting which varieties are attractive to insects at the nursery or garden centre to help with your choices.

    Having just written this, I went to Woodgate Nursery (10% discount with your gardening club membership card) and there on the lungwort were three big bumblebees.

    Next month, on Tuesday 15 April, involves the gardening club AGM at 7.15 pm (always very quick) in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, followed by Martyn Davey, who always has lots of helpful advice.

    The famous annual plant sale takes place on Saturday 10 May, from 8.30 am until sold out. Please pot up any extra plants to donate for the stall in Reepham Market Place; more details next month.

  • Help with gardening at Booton Hall

    Monday, March 10, 2025 - 09:02

    Piers Willis needs more gardening help at Booton Hall. Last year, with the aid of Reepham & District Gardening Club contacts, he filled this role, but unfortunately his aid is unable to continue. If you happen to know of anyone, please contact him by email.

    Piers also gave us a tour and lemonade in the luxurious shade in his garden. He has offered to do so again and guarantees a sunny day.

    Tina Sutton

  • The not-so-rosy environmental impact of importing cut flowers

    Friday, February 21, 2025 - 09:15

    By Victoria Plum

    I want Sarah Bernhardt! It is the most gorgeous blousy pink peony I have ever seen. There is a cerise, dark red version but the pale pink is my favourite.

    At this week’s meeting of the Reepham & District Gardening Club, Sarah Hammond, a local flower farmer from Knapton, gave an interesting talk on peonies, how to grow them (keep soil clear round roots, no mulch, position for hot sun and extreme cold) and how to get the biggest flowers (remove the lower buds) with lovely enticing photos.

    She grows other flowers too, and is a member of Flowers from the Farm, a group of growers who are promoting British-grown flowers.

    You might have heard about the substantial carbon footprint of cut flowers, from roses to Gypsophila, all sorts of flowers that we regard as everyday, are, bizarrely, flown in from Africa and other countries.

    The longer-term costs are degrading of soil by continued overreliance on the same crop year after year, extremely high use of water, which is often at a premium, let alone the cost, in every way, of gas as a preservative, and transporting the product by air and road.

    Exponents of this foreign trade maintain that financial and environmental costs are less than the cost of hot-housing in this country, but I feel the time has come to suggest that we shouldn’t expect to have exotic flowers at our fingertips throughout the year; we should accept their seasonality.

    I have no desire for roses or lilies all through the year; I am happy to enjoy them all the more when in season, in the same way that I rarely buy tomatoes in winter because they are tasteless.

    I happen to know that Alstroemeria, for instance, an excellent long-lasting cut flower, can be grown under glass or plastic in this country with no added heat and very little, if any, water.

    Flowers from the Farm is a UK trade association started by Gill Hodgson with members countrywide. On the website you put in your locality and then choose from your local growers who provide lovely home-grown seasonal flowers, conditioned carefully and grown by individuals who clearly love their job. I think our nearest is Norfolk Flower Farm, run by Ellie Frost, a talented florist, at Edgefield.

    Audience participation is encouraged at the next gardening club meeting with metal detectorist Graeme Simmonds. Join us on Tuesday 18 March at 7.30 pm in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, when we will be invited to handle interesting objects he has found. You can bring any curiosities you have found for his knowledgeable appraisal.

    I have already potted up some stray marjoram for the annual gardening club plant sale on Saturday 10 May in Reepham Market Place, from 8.30 am until sold out. I’ll keep an eye out for more “extras” that can be sold.

    Something’s been eating my aeonium. Photo: Tina Sutton

  • My gardening glass is always half full

    Saturday, January 18, 2025 - 15:57

    By Victoria Plum

    I have a National Garden Gift Voucher in my purse. With it I can spend £5 in any participating garden centre. I won this at the Reepham & District Gardening Club summer show for one entry. Just think how much I would have to spend if I had made more effort and won two, three or four classes, or even more!

    My gardening apprentice, Bruno the standard poodle, has wreaked havoc with my rhubarb, irises and tree peony. I think I can rescue them soon when the ground dries out enough to put the soil back. Perhaps he has unearthed seeds of rare things which might flourish in the future! I am a half-glass-full sort of person.

     

    Bruno in front of newly erected garden defences. Photo: Tina Sutton

     

    I have sent the bones he has found off to Gressenhall Farm & Workhouse to be preserved alongside those of the West Runton Mammoth. (Have you noticed the small mammoth roundel on the Felthorpe village sign? It’s there because the good folk of Felthorpe reckon the mammoth probably passed through the village on its way to the coast.)

    I have paid £10 to join the Norfolk Gardens Trust, following the talk at the gardening club from their representative last year, and via it I enjoyed an exceptionally interesting Zoom talk on botanical illustration, a particular interest of mine, and also in person at Bawdeswell Village Hall a fascinating talk about the restoration of artist-plantsman Cedric Morris’s garden at Benton End in Suffolk − at this event there were home-made chocolate brownies that were even better than mine.

    Bring your keen gardening friends to the next gardening club meeting at Reepham Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham at 7.30 pm on Tuesday 18 February, when Sarah Hammond will tell us about English peonies.

    I have never grown peonies at all apart from the one I mentioned above. That one came as a surprise bonus in a pot I bought from a Norwich garden visit with an exotic and short-lived salvia in. I recognised the leaves when they came through after the salvia died and hoped it would be one of those gorgeous, exotic, red or luscious pink tree peonies. It wasn’t; it was the common yellow one, but pretty leaves anyway.

    Remember to pot up any surplus plants you find when tidying your garden for the plant sale in May. I will be buying them to fill the gaps Bruno has created in my garden.

    Good gardening in 2025!

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