Our speaker for the March meeting was Andrew Babicz on the Topic of 'The Great Gardens Of Great Britain'.
Andrew told us a little of his background. His dad came from Poland and was a head gardener. Andrew learnt his gardening from his dad since the age of 5 and when he was leaving school a teacher helped him secure an apprenticeship with the National Trust at Inverewe Gardens from where he then moved to RHS Wisley.
The public visit these large properties for a variety of reasons; the big house, the gardens or the education. However, Andrew interspersed his talk with lots of humour and particularly jokes about his wife who reluctantly visits the gardens with him, but then takes herself off to the cafe for tea and cake.
Andrew's talk included pictures and useful snippets of information about what was particularly outstanding or notable at some of the properties that were located around England and Scotland (Wales is going to appear in his next talk).
Hampton Court has a wonderful display of tulips when in season. Great Dixter is famous for its quintessentially English gardens. Hyde Hall in Essex has a good example of a dry garden that is never watered. Benmore in Edinburgh has a fantastic monkey puzzle tree. Geoff Hamilton's garden (A former Gardeners World garden) is divided into rooms so it is easy to take inspiration for our smaller gardens. RHS Harlow Carr has the famous 'Betty's Tea Rooms' within the gardens. Kew Gardens is vast but quite expensive to visit. Levens Hall (south of Cumbria) has fantastic topiary. Edinburgh Botanical Garden has fantastic glass houses. The Thames Barrier Park had originally been planted with hedges cut to shapes to signify waves. Tottenham Hotspur Football Ground, very close to us, has very good gardens if you get the opportunity to visit.
Andrew included some interesting facts in his talk that we may not know. The Monkey puzzle tree is so named as they are so spikey it is difficult for the monkey's to climb them. In Chilli they eat the stalks of the Gunera plant as a vegetable. It is a type of rhubarb. You may recognise the Gunera as the enormous leaved plant that grows in bog gardens or at the side of very large ponds. In the UK we sweeten rhubarb and have it as a desert but it is actually a vegetable. In the Edinburgh Botanical garden is a lily which is carnivorous. The flower opens white, the fly goes inside to get the pollen, it closes round the fly and sinks below the water but all the time protecting the fly in an air bubble. The fly buzzes around madly and in the process pollinates the lily. The following day the flower raises to the surface, opens up and the fly escapes but the flower is now pink.
It was a very interesting and friendly talk and we look forward to part 2 in the future. Andrew told us that sadly garden magazines are no longer paying garden writers for their articles. They use 'influencers' who really don't have the experience but make a career out of publicity.