By Victoria Plum 
By Victoria Plum
The sun shone on the Reepham & District Gardening Club committee as they staunchly set out the stall selling a gorgeous and interesting range of plants for sale in Reepham Market Place.
This annual event is always well patronised. I came home with well-grown cosmos daisies, a Venus flytrap, an unusual white scented hosta and some other bits and pieces. What a variety for a plantaholic!
Our next meeting features Gabriel Read telling us about “A Year in the Cut Flower Garden” on Tuesday 17 May at 7.45 pm in Reepham Town Hall as usual, when membership cards will be available with all the coming year’s meetings with speakers listed.
I dined with friends recently who are intelligent, politically aware – friends who are not eco-warriors but try to be eco-friendly and do the right green stuff, try not to buy plastic, they shop locally, enjoy grass-fed meat (not too much though), drive an eco-car and so on.
Over the evening we set the world to rights, sorted out Ukraine, Mr Putin, Mr Johnson, local bus routes, farmers, education and immigration, and then our host said, “Tomorrow I’m going to spray off my daughter’s garden.” “Don’t do it,” I said. “I have to,” he said, “it’s got too bad.”
I was shocked that intelligent, aware people, with children and grandchildren waiting to inherit the Earth, still think it’s ok to add yet more poisons to our planet.
Rachel Carson wrote the seminal warning book Silent Spring in 1962. Have we learnt so little in 60 years?
And I also noted while shopping at Woodgate Nursery in Aylsham (where BTW if you are a Reepham Gardening Club member you can claim 10% discount) there were plenty of large containers of Roundup for sale.
It will only be government action that can save us from ourselves and our casual habits.
Brown fields and brown verges are evidence I have seen today of the profligate use of herbicides.
Mark Cocker in Crow Country mentions the “chemical-drenched monocultures” of the agricultural clay lands from Norwich down to Suffolk.
To combat this on our very small garden scale we are all engaging with “No Mow May”, leaving our lawns uncut to encourage the invertebrates upon which many animal lives depend.
But what is the point if the “go to” remedy for any ill is the easy way, just take the cap off a bottle?
Above and below: Reepham & District Gardening Club annual plant sale, May 2022. Photos: Tina Sutton
Geoff Fisher