• American homeowner association trumped

    Saturday, April 20, 2024 - 10:47

    By Victoria Plum

    It’s time to be looking out for the Yellow Book in your garden centre – the list of local gardens open for various charities. It contains useful descriptions of local gardens, many of which are only open for the National Garden Scheme, with a useful chronological list on the back page.

    April marks the Reepham & District Gardening Club AGM. As ever, the immaculate organisation of the committee meant that official business was over in about 10 minutes. The only thing you need to know is that due to rising costs, the annual membership rises slightly to £10, but the £1 entry for each meeting remains the same. What a bargain price for excellent-quality speakers of the calibre we have enjoyed this past year and the pleasant society of other keen gardeners, let alone free refreshments.

    Our speaker at the meeting was Ellen Mary, a keen and enthusiastic ambassador for gardening and plants of every sort. She described, with photos, some gardens in America and her own US garden (she lives there for part of the year) in North Carolina.

    Apparently, in some parts of America (the land of the free) there are homeowner associations (HOAs) that decide what you must grow in your front garden. Can you believe it?

    Ellen Mary’s new home had a selection of uninteresting shrubs in the front garden, which she got rid of, not knowing about the local HOA. She replaced them with a lovely selection of new and interesting plants and then received a letter from the HOA admonishing her.

    She is standing firm, she will not budge and change the garden back, and now there are other homeowners who are taking charge of their front gardens and making their own decisions about what to grow. Can you trump that?

    Saturday 11 May in Reepham Market Place marks the famous gardening club plant sale from 8.30 am until sold out. If you have plants to contribute please bring them to the Bircham Centre on Friday 10 May between 6 pm and 7 pm, suitably labelled if possible: we all like to know what we are buying. There are always unusual bargains to be had.

    Next month’s meeting of the Reepham & District Gardening Club at 7.30 pm on Tuesday 21 May in Reepham Town Hall, Church Street, features BBC Look East presenter Chris Bell; weather and night sky photography is his subject. Personally, I think we’ve had far too much weather this year.

    Above: Black Solomon’s seal growing in my garden. It creeps along underground and emerges in slightly different places each year. I bought it from Blacksmiths Cottage Nursery following an interesting talk at Reepham & District Gardening Club from the proprietor. (The stone is in the bird bath so insects can safely escape drowning.)  Below: Solomon’s seal in my garden. Some years it suffers from sawfly and some years it doesn’t. I don’t spray to get rid of them, it’s just something that happens. Photos: Tina Sutton

  • The Victorian plant hunters who transformed our gardens

    Thursday, March 21, 2024 - 09:14

    By Victoria Plum

    I thought it must be 1 April when a lawncare advertising flyer came through my letterbox. I could have “a lawn that I love”, I could “wow my family and friends”, make “next door jealous” or be “the envy of the neighbourhood”, all for a certain amount of money.

    It has to be said that my lawn, just a bit of grass really, does look more like the Himalayas, but would you spend money on expert treatment to make your lawn the envy of the neighbourhood? Not me.

    When it finally stops raining and you can tidy up outside, please remember to rescue any seedlings, saplings or runners to pot up for the Reepham & District Gardening Club plant sale on Saturday 11 May, when they can be sold in Reepham Market Place from 8.30 am for club funds.

    Hellebores have made a grand show this year, particularly near the Orangery at Felbrigg. Over the years I have bought some of the prettier ones, deep reds and pinks, and those with delicate spattered markings, but they seem to naturalise, set seed and the hellebores that dominate are the pale green and plain ones. They are all lovely but I do like the special ones.

    A friend had had the same disappointment, having been given half a dozen choice varieties, planted them carefully and the next year they were gone. Her answer was to plant some more, but this time in pots. I have tried this too and time will tell. I bought a lovely plant, Helleborus “Star of Passion” (pictured below) with yellow stamens that looks spectacular.

    Photo: Tina Sutton

    Did you know that at Woodgate Nursery, Aylsham, you can get 10% discount if you are a Reepham & District Gardening Club member? Don’t forget to take your card.

    In the British Isles we only have three indigenous conifers: yew, Scots pine and juniper. This month’s gardening club talk was on plant hunters with Kathy Gray, and one of the hunters she mentioned was David Douglas, who collected many more conifers from the west coast of America and truly changed the look of our islands with these introductions.

    We also learned about Joseph Banks who paid his own fare of £10,000 to join Lieutenant James Cook on the HMS Endeavour to sail around the world for three years – his own version of the “grand tour” which many young aristocrats amused themselves with.

    Some plant hunters collected for the Royal Horticultural Society, founded in 1804, and some were funded by nurserymen who hoped to make money out of unusual specialities. One of these, John Veitch, started a famous nursery that is still trading, and has a centre in Exminster near Exeter where I once lived.

    In South Africa, Francis Masson collected many species that we are used to seeing:  Strelitzia, protea, Echium, Zantedeschia, Trillium, Kniphofia, Agapanthus, gladioli, Streptocarpus and many more.

    In the early 20th century Henry Morris Upcher of Sheringham Park obtained rhododendron seeds for his collection from another great collector, Ernest Henry Wilson, who was known as “Chinese” because he collected from China. Clematis armandii was brought in by him; a lovely plant, sadly not happy in my garden. I have killed three and have now given up on them.

    Join us at 7.30 pm on Tuesday 16 April in Reepham Town Hall, Church Street, for a very quick AGM, and then Ellen Mary will encourage us to “Explore Gardens of the USA”. I wonder if Mr Biden and Mr Trump are keen gardeners?

  • Confessions of a naked galanthophile

    Wednesday, February 21, 2024 - 20:42

    By Victoria Plum

    If you weren’t at the Reepham & District Gardening Club meeting in February you missed a treat!

    Our speaker was Guy Barker, the naked gardener, and before you ask, no he wasn’t, although the town hall was pleasantly warm for the event.

    Do you remember Jamie Oliver, the naked chef, who styled himself in that way to show the straightforward nature of his approach? Guy has a similar approach.

    Neatly edged flower beds and perfectly striped mown lawns are not for him; a more natural look is what he likes.

    His lively, humorous and interested enthusiasm won us over as he entertained us with snowdrop sagas.

     

    Photo: Tina Sutton

     

    I always thought a snowdrop was just a snowdrop but a whole world of galanthophilia was opened up to us, and we gasped at the prices: “S. Arnott” at £5 per bulb, “Primrose Warburg” at £7 per bulb and (an “immortal” as named after someone specific) with yellow flowers, “Turncoat” at £50 per bulb.

    “Double Charmer” is available for £20 a pot, while “Moby Dick” is a bit more at £50 per bulb.

    Some snowdrops are infertile, so can only reproduce by bulb formation. Natural hybrids can emerge and if they are pretty or scented, and rare, they soon become sought after.

    “Morgana” will cost £300 per bulb, but these are all topped by “Golden Fleece”, which took 18 years to breed and costs (are you sitting down?) £1,850 per bulb!

    So if you see a figure in camouflage shuffling about in a lonely churchyard, looking furtive, it just might be me looking for a snowdrop with an extra long spathe or unusual green-splashed markings, hoping to make my fortune.

    Snowdrops should be moved “in the green”, but Guy told us that later is best, when the green has pretty well died down, so the plant is dormant or near dormant.

    A useful tip, if you are short of nettles for companion planting, is to let your snowdrops be covered with grass, weeds, etc., through most of the year because that will confuse the Narcissus bulb fly which is likely to burrow down near to your bulbs to allow its larvae to consume the bulb from the inside out, leaving only a husk − disappointing if the bulb is one you have just paid £1,850 for.

    Join us on Tuesday 19 March at 7.30 pm for Kathy Gray’s talk on “Plant Hunters”; she will start with the Tradescants. Several years ago I visited a garden in Walberswick, Suffolk, with links to that family where I won a Clematis montana as a raffle prize.

    There is always a raffle at the gardening club meeting; tea, coffee and homemade cake and biscuits are also available.

  • Controlling pests and diseases without chemicals

    Friday, January 19, 2024 - 17:30

    By Victoria Plum

    Martin Davey, a well-known local horticultural expert who worked for a long time at Easton College, gave us an interesting talk on pests and diseases at this week’s meeting of Reepham & District Gardening Club.

    He noted how times have changed over the past few years because we used to have access to many poisons that are now banned, so now we must resort to other ways of protecting our crops. For example, nematodes and parasites can be bought in to help nature overthrow the onslaught of pests.

    Did you know that one aphid can, in a year, reproduce enough new aphids to fill a cubic metre? These are a vital food source for many birds and other wildlife, and remember that bug-killers are not specific. If you spray to get rid of aphids, the lacewings, ladybirds and hoverflies cannot dodge the drops of poison.

    Martin showed us a handy trick with a small plastic pop bottle. Make a slug pub by cutting a window to give slugs and snails access to an inch or two of lager (smellier than ale, so potentially more successful), bury upright just a few inches to stabilise your trap and arrange it with the window at ground level to encourage easy access. Dispose of when full: tip on your lawn for the birds or in your bin.

    One of the best ways to discourage overwintering pests of any sort is to keep the garden tidy; not too many overturned pots for the snails to hide in. My garden is a model of this (ha, ha).

    While I used to tread on slugs and snails or torture them with salt, I now rescue them. I throw them in the bushes; I never kill them; I don’t kill anything now. This summer I was entranced by the beautiful rosemary beetles. I left them and the rosemary bushes are absolutely fine, no damage visible.

    I enjoy my succulents. Last year I was too kind and watered and fertilised too liberally and suffered losses during the two cold snaps we had because of their soft growth.

    This year I am being hard and have only watered once since bringing them in to the conservatory in October. I carefully followed my own good advice (I don’t always do this) and used rainwater. Luckily, I have plenty of this and plunged the pots to give a really good soaking before careful draining.

    I delight in the flowers that sit for so long on the plants and the geometrically placed leaves which I find fascinating.

    During my watering some water got spilt onto my Aloe arborescens (below) and I was intrigued to see it spiral down the plant as the leaves effectively funnelled it to the ground immediately around the main stem. What a clever survival technique to make the most of every drop.

    Photo: Tina Sutton

    Next month join us on Tuesday 20 February in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, to enjoy Guy Barker, The Naked Gardener, speak on “Snowdrops and Winter Treasures”.

    Be there for a 7.30 pm start and loiter afterwards to chat to friends and the speaker, and enjoy tea, coffee and homemade cake.

    I’m not sure my cake can compete with Karen’s yule log which she brought this month; it was fantastic. You never know what will turn up at the gardening club.

  • Leave those leaves alone

    Wednesday, November 22, 2023 - 20:49

    By Victoria Plum

    “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” or “Useful”… or a “Nuisance”? It’s leaves of course.

    I sweep them up and put them on flowerbeds or my big outdoor pots or compost heap. They provide easy and free soil conditioner, homes for vital little creatures, fertiliser, worm food and insulation for my plants against the worst of the weather.

    Wars are ripping countries and nations apart, people starve on one continent and seek slimming remedies on another and yet we use the world’s precious resources to make leaf blowers, which people seem to love for tidying up their gardens. (Who invented leaf blowers? Is it just me that thinks this is a ludicrous item?)

    Photos: Tina Sutton

    Alvan mentioned the Asian hornet threat at November’s Reepham & District Gardening Club meeting. He keeps bees and explained that we really need to keep a lookout for this alien that voraciously consumes our good insects and has very rapid reproduction.

    This time of year you might find one sleeping peacefully in your shed (notify alertnonnative@ceh.ac.uk). Note that the abdomen is very dark with only one yellow stripe. Please resist the temptation to kill any wasps you find; remember, they are our friends.

    Our speaker, Luci Skinner, told us about daylilies, Hemerocallis, which originated from China and have been known since 3000 BC. She showed us the different sorts with some pretty pictures and some diagrams; she had some for sale and some salvias, too.

    And there were many bags of perennials donated by club members to be sold for the bargain price of £1. I bought a Verbena officinalis var. grandiflora “Bampton”. I’ve no idea what it looks like but the label said “hardy”, which is always a plus, but what a prize.

    I also bought an Echium pininana. I have admired these towering giants in other peoples’ gardens and am thrilled to have my own – if I can safeguard it through the winter.

    Note that this year’s Christmas Party is on Sunday 10 December at 1 pm. It’s always good fun and sometimes there is a quiz.

    For the first meeting in 2024 we are lucky to have Martyn Davey as our speaker who knows lots about gardens and gardening. Hope to see you there on Tuesday 16 January. There will as ever be free refreshments and home-made cake.

  • Gardeners show giant vegetables at autumn show

    Friday, October 20, 2023 - 16:33

    By Victoria Plum

    When visiting my children in the West Midlands recently, they showed me photos they took at the Malvern Autumn Show this year: the most jaw-dropping marrows and largest, heaviest, longest vegetable competitions.

    Photos: Ben Sutton

    Many sorts of apples were displayed, too, which reminded me of a fascinating TV programme about apples with garden designer Chris Beardshaw.

    He showed how the traditional orchards of Worcestershire were rooted up and turned over to farmland because France flooded the market with cheap Golden Delicious apples and our farmers couldn’t compete.

    There is now a resurgence of interest in apples and pears, too. There is a new (about 10 years old now, but these things take time) community orchard at Hindolveston, and Apple Day at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse.

    The October meeting of the Reepham & District Gardening Club cheered us up with an amusing and lively talk on “Cottage Cures and Superstitions”, mostly from Lincolnshire, from garden designer, nurseryman and lecturer Andrew Sankey.

    We heard about willow and meadowsweet for headaches, mouse pie for whooping cough, cobwebs to bind your cut finger, greater celandine sap for warts and urine for chilblains.

    Ely Markets supplied opium from opium poppies (they also grow in my garden: I enjoy them but I never planted them, they just arrived) for the “ague”, which was malaria, flu and a variety of other ailments.

    Our speaker made the point that many of these “cures”, which we might think of as old wives’ tales, have been scientifically investigated and substantiated. If you think about it you can see that the cures that worked would be reused; those that didn’t wouldn’t.

    It was vital for girls to find a husband, so many games were employed to try to find out who you might marry.

    One way was to peel an apple without breaking the skin, turn around twice, then drop the peel over your left shoulder onto the ground: the shape made revealed the letter starting the name of your future beau.

    After at the last gardening club meeting, many hands made light work of the refreshments as the kitchen was heaving with helpers. (Thanks to you all. It wasn’t hard work was it?)

    Some of our new visitors expected to pay and I had to explain that they didn’t need to: free refreshments are all part of the fun.

    I look forward to seeing the kitchen full again on 21 November after the next talk on daylilies by Luci Skinner from Woottens of Wenhaston. If you visit her nursery make time to visit St Peter’s church to see the amazing 16th-century doom painting, which shows Adam and Eve entering the Kingdom of Heaven and the Devil filling the bowels of Hell with bad people.

    After the talk, which starts at 7.30 pm in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, there will be the famous bag sale. Bring your surplus plants, labelled in a bag for someone else to enjoy, £1 each for club funds. Real bargains can be had.

  • Forward-thinking estate saves marshland birds

    Sunday, September 24, 2023 - 15:55

    By Victoria Plum

    I very much enjoyed September’s talk at the Reepham & District Gardening Club by Andrew Bloomfield, a Holkham man, which was about the 10,000-acre National Nature Reserve formed in 1967 and part of the massive Holkham Estate.

    Historically, significant barriers, dams and land drains were put in place to dry out and drain the marshes, turning the saltwater brackish, and then eventually to freshwater to enable the land to be farmed and grazed with cattle.

    The now-iconic pines were planted in the 1870s to stop sand being blown from the dunes onto the marshland and spoiling the grazing, and about 100 years later, with new interest in returning the land to a more natural state, it was proposed to remove the pines.

    They are such a popular landmark and I am pleased they are still there, but some thinning has been done to allow more light and therefore wildflowers to break up the dark mass.

    Pine seedlings are prevented from colonising too much of the beach by the wardens during the winter months, who are then given a break from their summer tasks of chasing the naturists and protecting ground-nesting birds from holidaymakers, dogs and foxes.

    In the 1980s it had became apparent that bird life was becoming scarce and big changes were instigated. It was decided to raise water levels to restore the extensive marsh network to provide a better habitat for wetland-loving birds.

    An extensive system to allow natural spring water onto the marshes is now carefully managed, but of course a significant change in water levels brings further difficulties, and the trees that provided valuable nesting sites for spoonbills, egrets and rare European cormorants were under threat by rising water. A redundant duck decoy had become their valuable nesting place, but the trees were dying.

    So now, with tremendous industry, the wardens are making an entirely new replication of the nesting facility that those birds require, but one which is at a level that should be viable in the long term. I see this as another example of how forward thinking and dynamic Holkham has always been.

    Another part of the remit of the wardens and volunteers is regular counts and checks of wildlife and creatures. If this is not done there is no way of assessing the value or progress of any of the work they undertake.

    Severals Grange

    There was more excitement on Thursday 21 September as 30 members of the Reepham & District Gardening Club visited Severals Grange at Wood Norton (pictured below) to see the lovely examples of well-grown grasses and well-coloured foliage plants there.

    This used to be the Hoecroft Plants nursery, and its specialism was grasses and foliage plants. I remember a talk from one of the owners some years ago, so I was pleased to see evidence of their work in practice.

    Photos: Tina Sutton

    There were many lovely views, and the planting of occasional blasts of colourful flowers was very effective. I bought a good, bright yellow rudbeckia in the hopes that it will cheer up my garden in the same way.

    We enjoyed tea and cake in the garden, and there will be more tea (and coffee) and cake for keen gardening club members and guests on Tuesday 17 October 7.30 pm in the Town Hall, Reepham.

    Andrew Sankey will talk to us about “Cottage Cures and Superstitions – plants and their uses”.

    Where else would you find an interesting live talk, keen gardeners to chat with and refreshments, including home-made cake, all for just £1 (if you are a member that is)?

    I shall dust off my witches hat; why not wear yours, too?

    http://reephamgardenclub.org.uk/

  • Would you want to run a plant nursery?

    Saturday, August 12, 2023 - 10:31

    Would you want to run a plant nursery?

    By Victoria Plum

    In my last column, I forgot to mention the Reepham & District Gardening Club trip in early July.

    About 40 years ago I bought one or two Peter Beales roses from their nursery at Intwood Hall. They moved to a new site at Attleborough, and although I saw the sign every time we drove down that main road I had never visited until the club’s recent coach trip.

    Now I see I can buy the business for £1.45 million with an annual turnover of  £2.3 million. I don’t know the profit margin or perhaps I might be tempted.

    Would you want to run a plant nursery or a garden centre? Think about the difference between the two.

    The equation I see is a nursery where you grow many plants for love and struggle in all weathers with hard work or a garden centre where you sell smelly candles, greetings cards (high profit), and coffee and cake, and some plants grown by someone else, with their plant passports.

    Anyway, the gardens were lovely with impressive structures holding up torrents of gorgeous roses, as you would expect.

    Rose arch at Peter Beales. Photo: Tina Sutton

    A few years ago we had a gardening club visit from someone at Peter Beales who showed us slides of the fantastic, award-winning show displays and had cut-price roses for sale.

    I was pleased to buy a Ferdinand Pichard for only £5 (usually £15) – what a bargain! I first saw this lovely rose on a visit some time ago to Raveningham Gardens near Beccles. It was one of the originals I had bought on my visit to Intwood Hall and lost in a house move.

    Ferdinand Pichard rose. Photo: Tina Sutton

    We then travelled half an hour down the road to Fullers Mill. The garden is tended by Perennial, a charity that looks after a few gardens, and will eventually look after our own local gem, the Old Vicarage Garden at East Ruston, and also looks after those who work or have worked in horticulture who might need help. If you join Perennial for £30 you can enjoy free entry to their gardens.

    Fullers Mill was outstanding, interesting and, with natural plantings, sensitively looked after by friendly and knowledgeable staff and volunteers.

    There is too much to describe so please visit for yourself; it's at Bury St Edmunds. Good tea and cake, but I warn you that there are no smelly candles for sale.

    Good luck with your entries for the gardening club summer show on Tuesday 15 August, at 7.30 pm in Reepham Town Hall, Church Street. Go a bit earlier to register your entries.

    I see that in November we have a talk about the daylily. Did you know that you can eat the flowers?

    I mention this now in case you still have some flowering your garden and you want to try them. I eat them; they taste of sturdy lettuce and the dark ones are quite spicy. This is safe to do as they are not actually a lily.

  • What’s that caterpillar on my weeds?

    Thursday, July 20, 2023 - 11:24

    By Victoria Plum

    I found a plant with pretty, cut foliage early in the year and let it grow because I was uncertain about what it was. Then I began to suspect, and as the year went on I grew more sure.

    Just a few weeks ago the caterpillars convinced me that it is ragwort: lovely yellow flowers and attractive foliage and striking caterpillars as you can see in the photo.

    Cinnabar moth on ragwort in my garden. Photo: Tina Sutton

    In the shelter and good soil of my garden it has grown to four feet six inches tall, with many branches – a very handsome plant.

    When I kept horses I spent as many boring hours pulling ragwort out of my pastures as I spent setting up my mole traps.

    I did wreak war on the moles because, apart from the unstable ground that they create with their runs, the molehill soil makes an excellent seed bed. (At Hempton Green, Fakenham, I have seen keen old men harvesting the molehills with shovel and wheelbarrow for their own gardening purposes.)

    So I was keen to stop the ragwort seeds, which remain viable for 14 years, and other weeds too from proliferating on my land. I always had a bag of grass seed with me to throw onto the bare soil (the seed, not the bag).

    The point I am making here is that in certain circumstances I was keen to get rid of ragwort, but I am happy to let it grow in my garden because without it what would happen to the beautiful cinnabar moth?

    At this week’s Reepham & District Gardening Club meeting 45 people heard Paul Laurie from Bird Ventures in Holt tell us about the birds in our gardens; he has more than me.

    We enjoyed his clear photos and many interesting facts about the birds we see every day. For instance, siskins have tiny beaks that enable them to pull the seeds from larch cones, and they are so light that they can perch on but don’t break the brittle larch twigs.

    I have seen bramblings on Cawston Heath, just one or two, but Paul told us that in Slovakia there are estimated to be roosts of 70 million birds.

    The Romans brought little owls here with them because they were under the impression that they would be needed to hunt the cockroaches they thought proliferated in our grubby English houses.

    The significant loss of sparrows in the 1970s and 1980s was caused by the birds succumbing to cancer caused by the lead from petrol, so thank goodness my new three-litre 4x4 is diesel.

    We look forward to the next gardening club event on Tuesday 15 August, which is the summer show and social evening.

    We bring our entries in between 7 pm and 7.30 pm, then we all judge them (very democratic) and sit down with a drink and snacks and perhaps a quiz if we are lucky, and then applaud the winners who also get prizes as well as the glory. It’s light-hearted and fun. Do come.

  • Looking after our threatened hedgehogs

    Friday, June 23, 2023 - 15:38

    By Victoria Plum

    This month it was hedgehogs, an interesting talk for the Reepham & District Gardening Club from an engaging speaker, Jan Smith from Ryston Rachel’s Hedgehop Hotel, who reiterated what we all know.

    As we go about our daily lives, “using up” what the planet provides for us, tidying and neatening, we are destroying biodiversity.

    The fact that hedgehog numbers have declined from 30 million in the 1950s to 879,000 in 2020 (they are now on the red list of endangered species) says it all.

    We need to create hedgehog highways to allow them to forage two kilometres a night on average through our gardens and the surrounding area.

    Sadly, they cannot scale the six-foot fences we have around our houses to preserve our privacy and they cannot burrow through concrete gravel boards in the fences either; they need gaps.

    I’m guessing the old privet hedges we all used to have would have been much more hedgehog-friendly, enabling them to wander through and catch the beetles, caterpillars and invertebrates they favour.

    “No Mow May” is of course good for them because it encourages invertebrates that provide a good hedgehog dinner.

    But sadly, we forget to check for snoozing hedgehogs in the long grass when we strim in June as we “tidy up”: strimmer accidents are many and gory, and rarely survived by the poor little creatures.

    I am always delighted when my plants surprise me. I have a Sansevieria (Mother-in-Law's Tongue or Snake Plant) – it’s the variegated form and a handsome houseplant.

    Traditionally, it goes on forever with no care, even in the dark of a Victorian parlour. It is a survivor. It also purifies the air for us to help with our health and well-being.

    Mysterious spikes grew up, six in fact, and then opened to show a row of pretty, starry flowers with sweet honeydew on them, and a distinct and delightful lily-like fragrance surprised me further as I sat watching TV in the evening.

    My research shows that this rare, flowering event is an indicator of root crowding and of exposure to good light, which mine certainly has.

    Flowers have been rare on Sansevieria because their ability to survive in poor light has meant that traditionally we kept them in poor light, which deterred them from flowering.

    Above: Flowers on Sansevieria. Below: Queen of the Night cactus. Photos: Tina Sutton

    Another surprise is my Queen of the Night cactus, which has the most unpromising, tatty, strap-like leaves. However, this year I know why it’s worth putting up with the boring, ugly leaves.

    The plant is astonishing: long, fat buds develop and quickly open up to show a lemon-yellow, starry, elegant and highly scented flower.

    Join us next month on Tuesday 18 July at Reepham Town Hall, Church Street, to hear Paul Laurie from Bird Ventures in Holt tell us about “Birds of a Norfolk Garden”.

    Please remember the earlier start time of 7.30 pm, which allows a little more social interaction after the talk, which we all missed so much during the pandemic.

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