By Geoff Fisher 
By Victoria Plum
This year at the Reepham & District Gardening Club Christmas party we sat round in a friendly group and chatted, enjoying the shared snacks we had all contributed, and the punch carefully brewed by the committee, and remembering some of the most memorable speakers from the year just gone.
We vowed to ensure a visit to Henstead Exotic Garden: we were all so impressed by the photos and the talk given to us by the owner and creator.
We were challenged with a quiz, hooray! Even our vice-chairman, who really does know just about everything about growing things, learnt something new.
Did you know that vanilla, which we all know comes from Madagascar, is in fact an orchid? I looked on my bottle of vanilla extract (crucial to chocolate brownies) when I returned home and, yes, there’s the clue: a picture on the label.
Did you also know that Nebuchadnezzar planted the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? And that garden gnomes are in fact allowed at the Chelsea Flower Show?
One of the new members asked me what sort of gardening I liked – an interesting question. So, I have been thinking about it. What I really enjoy is being surprised by a plant doing what it wants to do with little or no direction from me.
Surprising seedlings from one of my favourite euphorbias providing me with extra plants to grow on or give away. Fruit from a chocolate vine, which someone gave me, just laid in a pot to see what might happen and it has given me a host of seedlings.
Cuttings just stuck in the ground with two chances: will they strike, or won’t they? Random seeds, for instance, cardoons that I gathered at Hickling, some of which I have sent to friends making a garden at the Mayfly community café in Lowestoft.
All this is clearly the opposite from, say, stately home or municipal planting, where massed planting of perhaps salvias are positioned for their colour and mass effect and then discarded when past their best.
So, what’s it all for? Why do we bother? For me, it’s the satisfaction of seeing the magic of what can grow, and as I wander round the damp and dead-looking garden, apart from the brilliant yellow mahonia, at this time of year it’s extraordinary to remember what a gorgeous mass of bright, lively colour was there in the summer and what seeds are loitering in the soil, just waiting for their chance of the right conditions to grow.
I know that the key to a tidy garden is to hoe, because if you hoe where there are no weeds then there never will be any. But if you do hoe you deny all those little chance seedlings an opportunity to surprise you. And in any case, there are so many plants in my garden there’s no room to use a hoe; mine has been gathering rust in the shed for years.
There’s no gardening club meeting in January, but lots to look forward to next year, particularly Simon Harrop on “Wildlife Ponds”. And thinking about ponds, do look up the Norfolk Pond Project online, a truly inspirational movement. Happy Christmas!
Above: Mahonia in December. Below: Vanilla essence and my orchid. Photos: Tina Sutton
