• Rethinking the water cycle

    Friday, May 19, 2023 - 10:00

    By Victoria Plum

    Well, the Reepham & District Gardening Club AGM was painless and took only five minutes for all business to be completed, leaving plenty of time to enjoy Fritha Waters’ interesting talk on her travails as a gardener.

    Her consideration for owners and their gardens and her acknowledgement of the eccentric emotional attachment we all feel for those things we grow was touching.

    We were all given our gardening club plug plant; this year it’s a petunia. The idea is that we tend these plants very, very carefully, then bring them to the summer show in August where the best – and possibly the worst – might win a prize.

    While moving my indoor plants this May to the great outdoors for the summer, something tiny, moving in the garden in a strange way, caught my eye.

    There was a tendril on a curled fern – it looked like the tendril on a white bryony or a sweet pea, but it clearly had a life of its own by the way it was moving. I had no idea what it could be.

    Then I realised it must be a nematode. I have never seen one before and have no idea which one this might be. Have you ever seen anything like this?

    Nematode on a fern. Photo: Tina Sutton

    The next day I found a leak under the kitchen sink, so I had to turn off the stopcock. So, until I could call a plumber, bearing in mind this was 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning, I had no water for the toilet, to clean my teeth, to make tea, to wash me or the dishes or vegetables for lunch.

    And it made me think, yet again, how dependent we are on being able to just turn on the tap, and how terribly wasteful we are with this truly vital resource.

    The most crucial equipment in my garden is my saucer collection to sit under my many pots and ensure that precious water is never wasted.

    Surely we need more than an apology from the water companies; we need a drastic rethink to the entire system because clearly it is mad to use good, treated drinking water to flush the loo.

    This week I enjoyed a walk at Blickling with Bob Leaney and the Norfolk & Norwich Naturalists’ Society and the Norfolk Flora Group. We saw the magnificent, small-leaved limes, historically an intrinsic part of our woodlands, and still an indicator of ancient woodland.

    And we learnt the subtle differences between bluebell and Spanish bluebell and hybrids, common figwort and water figwort, hairy birch and silver birch, chickweed and sandwort, brome grass and barren brome grass, and many more. How fascinating it all was.

    Small-leaved limes in Blickling Estate park. Photo: Tina Sutton

    Next month’s gardening club meeting is about hedgehogs with Jan Smith in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, on Tuesday 20 June. Please remember the start time is now 7.30 p.m.

  • Easy gardening with minimal intervention

    Friday, April 21, 2023 - 08:40

    I will certainly go to the Reepham & District Gardening Club plant sale on Saturday 13 May from 8.30 am in Reepham Market Place because, for the first time in a few years, there are gaps in my garden and I need new plants.

    This winter’s bad frosts have done for my gaura. I’ve carefully scraped the stems, but they really don’t show any signs of life. And there are other losses.

    I also got rid of an overgrown sophora, which was beautiful but just got too invasive for my small garden, and my “Petite Negra” fig tree: plenty of glossy leaves and elegant branches but never the beautiful, sun-warmed black figs straight from the garden – in 15 years I had only one!

    I always try to take along some plants for sale too as I have plenty of some things.

    When I was trying to get them established I never quite believed those who said that grape hyacinths are thugs (their leaves are so prolific they look like spaghetti), or even Allium christophii or primroses, but now my garden is swamped with them.

    Above: Grape hyacinths with their untidy "spaghetti" foliage. Below: Primroses that readily hybridise: the originals all came from gardening club raffle prizes. Photos: Tina Sutton

    It fascinates me to see which plants do well in my garden, which plants find themselves a choice niche to happily grow in.

    I’ve just found the corpse of a third Clematis armandii so must conclude that it doesn’t like my garden and it is therefore fruitless for me to buy yet another.

    I’m all for growing the easy things, those that will thrive in my conditions. What is the point of trying to change soil type or conditions to accommodate an alien species?

    “For the challenge,” I hear you say. Well, for me the challenge is to fit easy plants into the best slot in my garden to grow happily and healthily, with minimal intervention from me so I have time to sit and read the paper and drink tea.

    Next month’s gardening club meeting on Tuesday 16 May will start at 7.30 pm to accommodate the AGM, which unfortunately had to be cancelled in April.

    This will be followed at 7.45 pm with a talk by local gardener Fritha Waters. Please stay for tea and cake, and a chat with fellow garden lovers.

  • The mind-blowing world of plant reproduction

    Monday, March 27, 2023 - 17:28

    By Victoria Plum

    Next year’s list of speakers for the Reepham & District Gardening Club has been finalised, and we look forward to the annual general meeting – a necessary, and painless, event in any well-run club.

    At last we seem to be getting back to pre-pandemic normality. An early start at 7.30 pm on Tuesday 18 April, ensures there will be plenty of time to listen to Simon Partridge update us on what has been happening at How Hill, Ludham (where incidentally I saw my first swallowtail butterfly last year near the river) and then enjoy tea, coffee, cake and biscuits and chat amongst ourselves.

    The March talk was a fascinating saga on the development of plant life from the most basic bacteria several million years ago.

    Jim Payne of Walnut Tree Garden Nursery went on to describe the countless ways that plant life has evolved to find clever and cunning ways of reproducing and exploiting any avenue of possibility. The variety of plant reproductive activities was quite mind-blowing.

    He mentioned Kalanchoe daigremontiana (formally known as Bryophyllum daigremontianum), which produces seed from its flowers although viability is low.

    But it hedges its bets because around every leaf grows tiny clones of itself which drop to the ground with their little roots ready to grow.

    The shape and angled leaves of each plantlet is such that when rain drops down on them the weight of the droplets ensures the tiny plant stays the right way up, ready to grow.

    This strategy is so successful that you might know another name for it: “Mother of Thousands”.

    I’ve always been fascinated by this plant since a child. Fifteen years ago I was holidaying in Samos, Greece, where I found some growing in the garden of our accommodation.

    Our landlord kindly gave me a plant, with some leaf babies, and I secured it in a plastic lemonade bottle and smuggled it back to this country in my suitcase.

    Every year I let it grow big and let it flower, then when it gets tatty I discard it and bring on the babies for the next season.

    In the Saga magazine (some old person must have left it at my house by mistake) I see that we are advised to mow our grass infrequently, perhaps only every three to four weeks to allow the invertebrates to flourish.

    We now have a much better understanding of the connectivity of all life: biodiversity is the buzzword. Literally.

    If we have insects and flowers in our lawns, birds and other creatures will flourish.

    Pictured: Mother of Thousands – a flower that has been lovely for about two months, some of the leaflets on, and detached from, the leaves, and one baby plant with its well-established roots. Photo: Tina Sutton

  • Get on top of your ‘Rambling Rector’

    Wednesday, February 22, 2023 - 21:15

    By Victoria Plum

    My parents-in-law, growing up in Great Yarmouth between the wars, say that medlars (having been “bletted”, incidentally a Norfolk term) were a great treat around Christmas time.

    Some of us sampled medlars and the associated medlar jelly made by Jane Steward of Eastgate Larder, our speaker at the Reepham & District Gardening Club meeting this month.

    In an interesting talk she explained the history of the tree and fruit, which she described as “our forgotten fruit”.

    Henry VIII was a fan of the medlar; sweet fruit would have been popular in early times when our diet would have been much plainer than it is now.

    I’ve finally got on top of my “Rambling Rector”; my son gave me two of these fabulous roses about 15 years ago.

    When my children were small I trained them to spurn the miniature or dwarfing stock varieties of anything as we looked around the nursery plants because we had a huge garden surrounded by fields.

    Our roses sprawled and arched beautifully and rewarded us with a glorious show, but since moving to a smaller house and garden I have much less room.

    So, my now-grown-up son, remembering my enthusiasm for scale, kindly gave me two large pots of trouble!

    One I sent away with friends to live in Wales (lots of room there) and the other I have tried to keep under control at the far end of this garden, and every year I have cut and cut and cut it back.

    The flowers have been lovely, but not lovely enough to compensate for the scratches and scars on the postman, me, the neighbours and grandchildren from those terrible backward-facing thorns designed to grab hold indiscriminately of anything within a 20-metre radius.

    Rambling Rector root – far too big to put in a pot. Photo: Tina Sutton

    I mentioned to some friends this difficult digging job (it took me three good sessions to get it out) and asked if anyone wanted the rose (I hate to discard any viable plant).

    Luckily, one of my friends texted her daughter and she wanted it. So my Rambling Rector has gone to London, to live and hopefully flourish in a rectory garden in Marylebone with her daughter who, coincidentally, is a rector.

    Hating to discard viable plants, as I just said, I have been potting up any surplus ready for the gardening club plant sale on Saturday 13 May. Unusual plants are welcome, but everyday plants also find a new home easily.

    Next month join us at the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, on Tuesday 21 March at 7.45 pm to learn about “The Secret Life of Plants” with Jim Payne from Walnut Tree Garden Nursery.

  • A winter garden of surprises

    Thursday, January 19, 2023 - 17:22

    By Victoria Plum

    The weather has been so wet and inhospitable that I have barely seen my garden for months. But there are always surprises somewhere.

    In my conservatory, plants are flowering, such as a Crassula ovata “Blue Haze” (protect from frost it says on the label), which I bought from RHS Hampton Court Flower Show, where I went by coach on a very hot day about four years ago.

    I won’t do that again: the coach park was a good 20-minute fast walk from the entrance. The elderly and ailing people, trudging back to the coach carrying their bags of booty, desperate to get themselves home, was a sight to behold.

    The Crassula was small and when it refused to grow at home – it just didn’t move – I investigated and found that the roots, such as they were, were constrained by one of those little bags, a bit like a fat teabag that growers use to aid growth and handling of tiny plants.

    The bag was just too hard and made a barrier so that the roots could not break through. So I cut it away to free up the roots and allow them to make the most of my delicious compost, which they did.

     

    Crassula ovata “Blue Haze”. Photo: Tina Sutton

     

    This is the first time it has flowered and it really is a pretty plant with beautiful undulating leaves and delicate flowers.

    I have another Crassula (nameless), which has sent up long stems and also produced pretty flowers, and an Aloe with a great big flower bud getting ready to burst.

     

    Aloe arborescens with a flower bud growing about half a centimetre a day. Photo: Tina Sutton

     

    This week’s Reepham & District Gardening Club meeting was enjoyed by a good number of members, despite the weather being extremely cold.

    Chris Bell spoke on climate change and explained how global warming would affect us.

    Next month on Tuesday 21 February we expect to learn about “The Wonderful Medlar”, so join us in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, from 7.30 pm, with tea, coffee and cake and biscuits, and a chat afterwards.

  • Why we always talk about the weather

    Monday, December 19, 2022 - 17:25

    By Victoria Plum

    Foreigners wonder why we British always talk about the weather. The reason is because it is always changing.

    A Canadian friend was mocking our discomfort at the latest cold snap, but we just aren’t used to it. Can you believe that events this year, and not just Reepham & District Gardening Club events, were cancelled due to extreme heat and extreme cold?

    To discourage “soft growth” I had been thinking that during this winter I would be a bit harder on my succulents.

    Whereas I would normally water every week or fortnightly through the winter I have not watered at all since bringing them indoors from my outdoor benches in late September and October.

    They were already fairly dry when the cold struck, so that with my emergency heater (annoyingly) not working in the conservatory I ensured the dehumidifier was on.

    The temperature did go below freezing, but since I (very idly) did not go downstairs in the coldest part of the night in my nightdress to check, I am not sure how far below it went.

    Above: A  Norfolk-bred aloe growing outside my conservatory this week, notice the ice and ladybird. (The other succulents are inside the conservatory.) Below: Another shot of the same plant. It has survived frosts before. Time will tell if it does again.  Photos: Tina Sutton

    What I have been remembering is the talk from Richard Clark of Panache Plants (he was previously a geography teacher and so had a particular knowledge of weather effects and conditions) when he explained how many interesting plants could cope with cold weather if they were not sitting in the wet (he was on a mission to encourage us to grow more exotic and unusual perennials).

    I bought some ginger lilies from him that do well outside. I always remove their water saucers in the winter and prop the pots on champagne corks to ensure they drain.

    If you think about it, many of our favourite plants come from countries with extreme temperatures but little rainfall, so we have to learn to accommodate them in our damp climate. You only have to watch a cowboy film to see that this is true.

    Over the years we have enjoyed a wealth of talks on many subjects at the gardening club (I mention a few just to give you an idea of the variety).

    We learnt about local fungus, the Victorian language of flowers, saffron, lavender, insects, mole-catching, the history of the sweet pea, walled gardens, ancient garden implements (which included a game show), archaeological discoveries, topiary, alpines, garden design, peregrines at the Cathedral, plant propagation and more.

    I wonder what interesting talks are planned for next year?

    More on the weather at next month’s meeting when Chris Bell, BBC Look East weather presenter, will talk to us about climate change.

    Join us at Reepham Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, at 7.45 pm on Tuesday 17 January. There will be a raffle, tea, coffee, cake and biscuits.

    Merry Christmas, and a healthy and worry-free New Year.

  • The evolution of Bressingham Gardens

    Wednesday, November 16, 2022 - 19:01

    By Victoria Plum

    At the November meeting of the Reepham & District Gardening Club we were treated to the story of how Erica Vaccari travelled from Italy with her bicycle and secateurs to Bressingham to help out just as the Covid lockdown happened – and she is still there!

    We’ve all visited the gardens and steam museum in the past and heard the history of how Alan Bloom sought land for a new garden which brought him to Bressingham in 1953 (I remember the photograph of the walled garden with about a quarter acre of rhubarb growing), where he bred perennials and started a nursery to sell them.

    He established beds to enable him to assess the worth of his new varieties and these are now a “curated garden”. Erica explained this concept, which was completely new to me.

    The plants are immaculately cared for, deadheaded and cut back in October, all of which ensures no unintended hybridising, and the plants remain as initially intended, some unique to this place.

    As a foil to the colourful summer show of the perennials Alan’s son Adrian grew many sorts of dwarf conifers.

    I inherited a garden at Saxthorpe with three dwarf conifers in the front garden – they were no longer dwarf. They had grown and grown, which is of course what Adrian Bloom discovered at Bressingham over a few decades. This gave him the opportunity to prune, clip and attack these trees and experiment with them to add structure and style to the gardens.

    Gardens are always evolving and it seems that Bressingham is entering a new period of regeneration and rejuvenation.

    New ventures are afoot, such as holiday lets, glamping, a wedding venue, cut flowers – all with the aim of supporting the gardens. A gardening club trip is planned for next year.

    Meanwhile, buy your essential mistletoe from the gardening club at the Reepham Festival of Light in the Market Place on the afternoon of 4 December.

    And join us for the Reepham & District Gardening Club Christmas party in the Town Hall, Church Street, at 7 pm on Tuesday 13 December.

    Please bring a small plate of finger food to share and consider creating a table decoration for which a prize can be had. There will be a quiz (hooray!), a raffle and entertainment.

    Into the New Year (I can’t quite think where this year has gone) on Tuesday 17 January when Chris Bell will talk to us about climate change at 7.45 pm in the Town Hall.

  • Trials and tribulations of exhibiting perfect flowers

    Thursday, October 20, 2022 - 12:22

    By Victoria Plum

    The great plant exchange took place this month, otherwise known as The Bag Sale, at the Reepham & District Gardening Club.

    Excited members peered into plastic sacks to see what rare surprises were to be had. We traded day lilies for quinces, allium for acanthus, tiger lilies for cactus.

    The meeting’s talk was by Johnny Walkers of Taylors Bulbs. The top horticultural shows are the shop window for plant producers that supply garden centres and other retailers.

    Johnny Walkers has won 25 gold medals in successive years at Chelsea, and we heard all about the trials and tribulations of exhibiting perfect flowers within a perfect display.

    I remember a winning competitor at the gardening club’s summer show telling us that he had chosen his five prize-winning, uniform runner beans from more than 100, which he had had to pick, which emphasises the colossal number of blooms and spare flowers that have to be grown by a commercial competitor to ensure success.

    To compound problems, it now seems that floral foam – Oasis – is banned by the Royal Horticultural Society. It is non-recyclable and non-biodegradable, toxic for humans and animals (but luckily you can still buy it via Amazon).

    Exhibitors at RHS shows are certainly going to have problems knowing where to stick their stems to stay upright in future. I wonder what they did before 1954, when Oasis was invented?

    A friend gave me this extraordinary fruit (pictured above). It is violet in colour and grew on her Akebia quinata, or chocolate vine. Although a pretty and unusual plant, it is very invasive and we really should think twice about letting these vigorous foreigners into our gardens.

    Tuesday 15 November sees the next Reepham & District Gardening Club meeting, when Erica Vaccari will talk about Bressingham Gardens, at 7.45 pm (doors open at 7.30 pm) in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham.

  • Controlling insect pests without chemicals

    Friday, September 23, 2022 - 08:44

    By Victoria Plum

    I knew it would be good and it was. At this week’s meeting of Reepham & District Gardening Club, Dr Ian Bedford led us on another fascinating journey round the insect world.

    Ian is an entomologist, now happily retired, who used to work at the John Innes Centre in Norwich. The centre takes its remit to ensure food security extremely seriously.

    “Food security” means ensuring that the world’s vastly growing population will have enough to eat. So research into the activities of insects and invertebrates is crucial – 20% of food crop is destroyed by them.

    While the advent of chemical pesticides, both systemic and otherwise, has led to cheaper food production, we now understand that there are more suitable, subtle and less environmentally damaging ways to successfully grow crops: we are learning to be cleverer.

    Research has led to real understanding of how these small creatures function (although I suspect we will never understand it all) and we now know all sorts of extraordinary facts; for instance, that some plants send out distress signals when under insect attack that attract predators to counteract it.

    This world of tiny creatures, upon which we all ultimately depend for our lives, has evolved, with every creature finding a niche and all being interdependent. The complexity of it all is mind-blowing.

    We like to enjoy a cup of tea or coffee and home-made cake at the end of the gardening club meeting – it’s free!

    Gold stars go to Irene and Carole for helping with the washing up. If you would like a gold star you are welcome to join us in the kitchen next time.

    At 7.45 pm on Tuesday 18 October at Reepham Town Hall, Church Street, the speaker, Johnny Walkers, will tell us about the traumas and excitement of bulb growing.

    This next meeting will include a bag sale. Please bring any spare perennials in a carrier bag (or flower pot, I have potted up some self-sown seedlings to bring as they would not survive in a bag) when they will be sold at a bargain price for club funds.

    The spiny or spiked shieldbug (Picromerus bidens) – there are lots of these on my raspberries, although they suck the juice from caterpillars, not raspberries. Photo: Tina Sutton

  • Importance of invertebrates for soil health

    Thursday, September 8, 2022 - 17:03

    By Victoria Plum

    I was tidying up in the garden this week. Really I think of it as straightening rather than tidying, as it’s just setting a sort of order to stray flower pots and weeds, tying stuff up, cutting other stuff down – I had to cut down some very vigorous vine sprays.

    My vines, like all my deep-rooted plants, have continued to grow through this difficult gardening summer and have been particularly quick to put on an extra growth spurt since the limited recent rain fell.

    I cut them down and immediately thought, since I try to waste very little, that I should keep the best of the leaves in the freezer, which is what my Greek friends do, for making dolmathes. (In fact, I don’t make dolmathes; it’s far too fiddly and they never taste the same in this country anyway.)

    So I fell to thinking how to make use of the luscious leaves. Yes, I thought, I’ll put them in my (compost) hot bin, where the moist greenery would help to make up for the lack of grass mowings this year.

    Then I thought I could implement a labour-saving shortcut: I could just leave the leaves on the ground (saving the trip to the bin and the trip back next year with the compost) as part of that crucial strategy of regenerative gardening, which is protecting and feeding the soil rather than just raping it to grow your plants in the short term.

    My garden looked fabulous early in the year, but as growth died off (I’m thinking particularly of day lilies here) I just left the dead leaves on the ground because I knew that if I cut the old and scorched leaves away completely, the soil would have had no protection from the blistering sun.

    So that has been the pattern this summer: to leave old plant matter on the soil surface to give respite to the tiny invertebrates that are working for my soil health and a layer of protection against the baking sun.

    I acknowledge that the dead leaves don’t look pretty but the long-term health of my plants and soil is more important to me.

    Above: A fly on my hollyhocks (look up flies on Wikipedia for some astonishing sights). Below: A spider and spiderlings at Oulton Chapel this summer. Photos: Tina Sutton

    So my straightening up now is to clear the thickest layers of leaves to let the rain get through, although lots of the leaves have broken down by themselves now, primroses for instance.

    My next job is to rake the grass as vigorously as I can to get up as much dead stuff as possible, and then when rain is forecast strew some lawn seed in the worst-hit places.

    I regard watering a lawn a sin and a terrible waste of water as grass always recovers remarkably well, but I bought the seed early in the year and grass seed doesn’t keep well so I might as well use it up to thicken the sward and repair the excavations my daughter’s puppy enjoyed making.

    I am looking forward to the next Reepham & District Gardening Club meeting on Tuesday 20 September, at 7.45 pm in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham (there will of course be tea and cake).

    The speaker will be Dr Ian Bedford, a retired research entomologist and a down-to-earth scientist, who will tell us about “Bugs on the Move” – clever insects and invertebrates.

    As laypeople we know so little of the vast insect world and yet all life depends on it. For instance there are countless sorts of beetles – just look on Wikipedia, where you will find the array truly astonishing.

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