By Victoria Plum 
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.
Photo: Fabulous fern in my garden. Photo: Tina Sutton
Geoff Fisher