By Geoff Fisher 
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 (pictured above); 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.
I have a Petite Negra fig (above). 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.
Photos: Tina Sutton