February's 2026 Zoom meeting, Alison Marden – How to create a great front garden

 Zoom details are:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4043014750 To download Zoom first time. 
Meeting ID: 404 301 4750
Passcode general : bonsai (this is used for most open meetings) (Note 8pm start time) Picture showing an example. 

 

In February we hold our monthly meeting on Zoom and we share our meeting with all the members of Tendershoots Garden Club Network who we are members of. This allows members of garden clubs from across the country to attend our meeting and share our interesting talk. In return we can attend talks arranged by those other clubs. We do appreciate that not all of our members use Zoom or the internet and that is a shame but the weather is often quite poor at this time of year that members cannot always make it to the hall. It also allows us to have a speaker from further away who would not be willing to travel to Walthamstow.

Our speaker was Alison Marsden and her talk was on ‘How To Have A Great Front Garden’.

Alison gave us a very interesting and structured talk that was very helpful for anyone thinking of redesigning their front garden. I am one of those who is currently replanning my front garden. We all have front gardens of different sizes but the lessons and tips can be used regardless of the size of your garden or even whether it is a front, back or side garden. So think about these things:

1. Where  do you (and others) mainly look at it from

When it is a back garden we mainly view it from the house outwards. Sometimes from your kitchen window. But when it is a front garden you and others will mainly look at it from the street/pavement as you enter. The backdrop is your house.

2. Seasonality

With a back garden we probably go through it less often in the winter. As autumn proceeds we are probably out there less often through the winter and until Spring arrives. We are mainly just viewing it from our house. But with a front garden we are passing through it every time we leave and return home. This will often be most days. So our front garden needs to have interest throughout the year even more than a front garden.

3. What  are your needs

Do you need to have space for parking?, How many bins? How will you access your door – a path? Who else needs access Postman, deliveries, window cleaner.

• The aim of a front garden is to make your house look fabulous. Think about it complimenting the shape and style of your house.

• Think about the planting for interest throughout the year. Colour, flowering, evergreen or deciduous, shrubs for structure. And scent to please your visitors.

• Wildlife – would bird boxes or feeders work? They don’t want to be in full sun.

So whether you have a front or back garden that needs attention think about these things. Take a cup of tea and stand looking at your garden from the aspect where it is viewed most often. Look at it in different lights, in different weathers and ideally at different times of year. Do your planning before you launch into your redesign. But also note that little things can make all the difference e.g. some well placed pots if you are not ready for a full redesign.

 

Christmas Social December gathering

 

Thank you to all the members who were able to attend our Christmas social last Friday.  We had a lovely buffet spread brought to the club by our members.  It was really delicious.  We also enjoyed the Quingo game which everyone appeared to enjoy.

 

 I wish you all have a lovely time over the Christmas and New Year holidays.

AGM November's meeting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whittingham Roots & Shoots

Gardening Club

AGM Agenda - 7 November 2025

1. Apologies

2. Chair’s Report

3. Minutes of AGM 2024

4. Treasurers’ Report

5. Committee Stands Down

6. Election of Committee

   1. Chair

   2. Vice Chair

   3. Treasurer

   4. Membership & Outings Secretary

   5. Newsletter Editor

   6. Committee Members

7. AOB

Perennials, Rose Cottage Plants by Ann and Jack Barnard, October's meeting

At our October meeting we were joined by Ann and Jack Barnard, who run ‘Rose Cottage Plants’ nursery in Epping. They have won 4 gold medals for their display at Chelsea Flower Show. They specialise in bulbs, dahlias and perennials and their talk to us on this occasion was about perennials (those plants that die back each winter but return each spring or summer). They mainly sell either by mail order or at the Garden shows. I often see Ann and Jack at the Great Comp Garden shows in Kent and have often bought bulbs from them. Their nursery is only open for special events.

Ann gave us a wonderful talk and threw in lots of useful tips and pieces of useful information. E.g. if the second part of the name is written with a lower case letter then it means this is a species type and will come true (the same as the parent) when grown from seed. And if you are growing on clay soil then plants are less likely to self seed while in light soil some plants will produce seedlings in vast numbers.

Ann started growing from seed when she couldn’t find the plants she wanted to buy. Her love of plants grew and they started a nursery originally in Theydon Bois but when this took off and they outgrew the size of the garden they bought an old farm and started all over again.

The talk and accompanying slide show brought us a whole range of perennial plants that bring colour to our gardens throughout the year. We can start the year with Brunnera, Bleeding Hart and Aquilegia. Lychnis is useful as it self seeds and fills the gap between bulbs and later perennials. Penstemon are really useful summer flowering perennials as they flower for a long period. And there are perennials for late summer e.g. Phlox. There are perennials for both free draining and heavier soils and so it is important to do your research to make sure your desired plant would suit your conditions. There are perennial foxgloves which actually need free draining soil whereas the biennial type need moisture. 

 

David Williams on ‘The Greening Of London’, September's meeting

Our speaker at our September meeting was David Williams on ‘The Greening Of London’. David is a registered City of London guide and lecturer who specialises in themed walks and talks about London’s history.

David started the talk with some facts and statistics on how green London is. It has the reputation of being a very green city. In fact 47% of London is green which includes parks, formal gardens, allotments, cemeteries, our house gardens and window boxes. Apparently, there are 741 allotment sites across London. The City of London (the square mile) is very affluent and funds lots of sites in other London Boroughs and the surrounding area including St James and Hyde Parks, Epping Forest and the Olympic Park.

Victoria Park in Hackney is believed to be the first public park. There are 7 large cemeteries around London including Highgate, which were created to accommodate the growth in the population of London.

We were also given lots of information about historical people and organisations that had an influence on London and it’s green spaces. The Worshipful Company of Gardeners is one of the livery companies of the City of London a philanthropic organisation which provides charitable work. Christopher Wren designed a plan to build a park all along the Embankment by the river Thames. It took 200 years to come to pass. Humphrey Repton, a famous landscape garden designer lived in Romford, Essex. He famously recorded his designs in little red books. Octavia Hill was one of the founders of the National Trust.

Professor Abrecrombie was a town planner was also a strong advocate for implementing ‘green belts’ to safeguard agricultural land from growing urbanisation which is very relevant to us today. Together with the architect JH Forshaw, they identified key problems such as overcrowding and poor housing in deprived neighbourhoods, traffic congestion and the inadequate provision of open space. Abercrombie and Forshaw’s recommendations included the separation of industry and housing, the enhancement of historical centres, an increase in open space and the creation of three ring roads to ensure the city’s functionality.

The talk gave us all food for thought on issues about the environment, our access to open spaces and the local planning processes.

 

Professor Abrecrombrie 

 

The Worshipful Company of Gardeners 

 

 

 

Growing soft fruit, Mike Able August's meeing

Our speaker for our August meeting was Mike Abel on the topic of Growing Soft Fruit. Mike
had been a horticulturalist and taught Soft Fruit growing at college during his career.
Mike explained that all soft fruit is self-fertile meaning it doesn’t need another variety of fruit
to cross pollinate unlike for example apples. But the flowers will still need to be pollinated if it
is to produce fruit. As we have heard from several of our speakers, bumblebees rather than
honeybees are actually the best pollinators for a number of reasons. Their large fluffy bodies
catch a lot of pollen, they fly in colder weather meaning they are out earlier and later in the
day and they will even fly when the weather is wet. They are also willing to pollinate in
polytunnels. So, bumble bees are an important resource.
Soft fruit includes things like strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries,
gooseberries, and currants. They are propagated from plants (e.g. cuttings or rootstock) not
from seeds. Some useful tips about the various fruits were:
· Strawberries can be summer fruiting where the crop comes just once each year, or
continuous, but you get less quantity – so maybe not enough to fill your bowl! They form
runners after fruiting and you should peg these down so they root and create new plants.
‘Malling Centenary’ is recommended for good flavour.
· In raspberries you can get summer fruiting or autumn fruiting. The advantage of autumn
fruiting varieties is they are more self-supporting and don’t need to be tied up. You cut them
to the ground once they have fruited and they will fruit on the new wood they grow next year.
Whereas with summer ones you only cut out the stems that produced fruit this year and any
new stems will produce next year’s fruit. ‘Malling Minerva’ is a good summer variety and
‘Polka’ a good autumn one. All raspberries are very thirsty and need good watering.
· Blackberries – prune out the old wood once it has fruited but leave the new branches for
next year.
· Blueberries need acid soil (Ericaceous compost) and preferably rainwater.
· Gooseberries fruit on the old wood. A major pest is the sawfly whose eggs hatch into a
small green caterpillar and eat all the leaves before you even notice them.
· Blackcurrants fruit best on new wood. It is recommended that you cut out one third of the
branches each year. Birds are the major pest eating all your currants.
Mike brought samples of the plants so that we could identify them, and also brought a
selection of things for sale including fly traps and honeycomb.

 

 

Chestnuts Farm Allotments visit in Chingford Road 4, July 2025

For our July meeting we decided to do something different. We visited one of our allotments in Walthamstow to learn more about running an allotment, what it entails, what is the commitment and what you can grow. We had a very good turnout and the weather was lovely and sunny. We had an interesting and informative talk from Barbara Humm who has an allotment at the site and then a tour where we got to meet some of the people on their allotments. It was very interesting to see the different styles and how people arrange their crops and flowers. We finished the evening with refreshments, plant sales and networking.

Barbara’s talk:

Chestnuts Farm Allotments started in 1914 when there was a drive for people to grow their own food. It was originally much bigger, and covered the ground from Chingford Road to Forest Road. Some of the area was taken over by the council to build the Leisure Centre, and the site was extended beyond the original hedge. There are 65 plots, some divided into smaller plots. The minimum size is 4 rods, and the largest are 12 rods. Most are 10 rods. (A rod was used to control a team of oxen when working on the land and measures 5.5 yards (5.03 metres).

 

We form part of Walthamstow Town’s Allotment Association. There are 3 other sites in the Association, and we work together. We pay rent to the council and manage the site ourselves with a committee.

The building site behind the Town Hall is going ahead and the developers gave us a portacabin and a notice board to keep us sweet. They reduced the height of the flats because we complained that they would overshadow the plots at the top of the site.

We have a long waiting list, but because so many people want allotments now, we have introduced a helper scheme. This means people can sign up for a year to help someone who is struggling to keep their plot in order. It gives people an idea of how much work is involved in keeping a plot productive. People often take a plot on then give up because they don’t have time to come regularly.

There are a lot more families with young children on site now. When I took my plot on 23 years ago, it was mainly grumpy old men who didn’t really want women on the site. There were a lot of unused plots, so I could take my pick.

I was quickly asked to be on the committee. When I went to my first meeting, I asked where the minutes were, and was told, Oh we don’t bother with that. The accounts were written on a scrappy bit of paper. I started changing that, and have been trying to get off the committee ever since!

We try to grow organically, and don’t encourage weedkillers or pesticides. We have mains water, but try to encourage the use of saved rainwater where possible. No hoses are allowed. We have a school plot, and a toddlers group which meet once a month.

The cost of a plot is about £80 a year which goes towards all the costs, water bills, rent to the council, insurance, equipment maintenance and other expenses.

Contact Barbara if you would like to be considered for the waiting list.

Pictures of the visit to the Chestnuts Farm allotments in Chingford Road.

 

Sweet Peas, by Lesley Gambin a specialist Sweet Pea grower. June's meeting

Our speaker last month was Lesley Gambin who is a specialist Sweet Pea grower based in Essex.  Their garden at Blunts Hall Nursery (http://bluntshallgarden.co.uk/) is open for the NGS by arrangement for visits.  They grow mainly for the production of seeds.

We were told about the history of sweet pea growing and some historical growers who investigated and propagated sweet peas.  John Ray was a botanist whose mum was a herbalist.  He discovered the 'Cupani' variety which is small, red and mauve with lots of perfume and still popular today. He is followed by Henry Eckford who came from Scotland a horticulturist and reputedly the most famous breeder of sweet peas. There was a lot of competition amongst seed suppliers over the supply of seeds. Ernest King of ‘Kings Seeds’ who still exist today, had their extensive trial beds in Coggeshall Essex supplying 160 varieties of seeds. Ernest called himself the ‘Sweet Pea King’.

Blunts Hall Nursery have sandy loam soil with a ph of 7.5 which is slightly acid.  Its is generally sandy loam along the A12 corridor and so ideal conditions to grow sweet peas. ‘Painted Lady is one of their favourites. It is small and dainty and can be grown in a pot.

There are different varieties of sweet peas.  The older varieties tend to be smaller. Grandiflora varieties are medium sized and Spencer varieties are larger.  Grandiflora have a better sent. Sweet peas are annuals grown from seed each year.  You can either sow your seed in late autumn October/November or in early spring (January/February).  Plant them on wigwams or in rows up rows of parallel stakes supported at the top (an elongated wigwam). Add lots of compost and maybe a little manure if possible. In order to keep them flowering it is essential that you cut off the dead flower before it forms it’s seed pod. It is best to cut the flowers daily and put them in vase so they never go to seed.

Lesley recommended a trip to Helmingham Hall near Ipswich if you would like to see a good display of sweet peas growing. Helmingham Hall is open Sunday to Thursday.

Cupani  

    

                                       

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Painted Lady

 

All about bees by Katy Langley. May's meeting

We had a wonderful and interesting talk by Katy Langley all about bees. Katy is a professional bee keeper. It covered everything from the early beginnings. We saw Egyptian pictures of bee keeping and cave paintings featuring mostly women doing the bee keeping.

There are various types of bees, the honey bees, bumble bees, solitary bees and while only the honey bee makes honey the others perform an important role in pollinating our plants and crops. In fact the bumble bee is a better pollinator as it has a wider rounded body and gathers more pollen on its fur which is distributed to other flowers. Without them we would have no food.

We learnt about their anatomy. They have 4 wings, 2 stomachs and 5 eyes and they see colour differently to how we humans see it. Female bees have stings, but males don’t although I’m not sure how we will tell which we should fear. Although in fact a bee isn’t going to sting unless it feels threatened. And they communicate with each other with smell which is why bee keepers use smoke when they want to retrieve the honey so that they bees can’t alert each other.

Each hive would have one queen bee who lays 2000 eggs a day. The eggs turn into larvae after 6 days. The queen mates with various male bees while flying. Male bees are called drones and their job is to collect the pollen to make honey. They also keep the hive clean removing any dead bees or plant litter. The hive will identify a new queen and then the bees will swarm when a new home has been found.

Some threats to our bee populations include pesticides and the Asian hornet. If you want to encourage and care for our bee population (and remember we rely on them for our food) then plant trees where possible (Kew Gardens

is currently carrying out a study to find out which trees bees prefer), have shallow water in your garden for them to drink from (a dish kept topped up with some pebbles in is ideal), and some shelter for them to overwinter. Remember only honey bees want hives other bees nest in bird boxes, containers with straw inside, underground in piles of leaves etc. I’ve had bumble bee nests in my compost heap a couple of times. 

 

We also had an opportunity to buy some local honey. We learned that honey is only legal if it contains less than 20% water. Honey is made up of fructose and glucose. The higher the content of glucose the quicker it will solidify. However, we were told all honey will solidify in time. If you want to return it to a liquid/runny honey then stand your jar in boiling water to heat it up and it will turn runny again. The taste of honey will vary according to the plants that the bees collected the pollen from.

‘It ain’t rocket science, it’s a lot more complicated’. Alan Clark, April's meetng.

 

Our talk in April was by Alan Clark who returned after his talk last year on the trees at Kew Gardens. This month his talk was on the subject of ‘It ain’t rocket science, it’s a lot more complicated’. It was a very different talk and left us all wondering about the meaning of life! Alan told us that his interest in the natural environment started when he was a child. He was very interested in the creepy crawlies. Alan has an interesting take on the modern philosophy when we are told that biodiversity is about all the wildlife working together, but instead Alan suggested they were all competitors, eating each other. This raises some interesting philosophical considerations. E.g. Should we be vegetarians or is eating animals the normal way of things. Alan’s talk contained a lot of science for us to consider. How do seeds know which direction to send their shoots? If you plant a seed or bulb the wrong way up, the shoot will still find its way up to the surface. He told us the ‘big bang wasn’t actually a bang and it wasn’t very big. The universe has since been stretching and is still growing. I myself have heard another talk and the scientists have no answer as to why this is. We also learned that most of our energy comes from light and all life as we know it needs water to survive. You have probably never considered this but, plants don’t pee or poo they instead recycle everything. The only thing they expel is oxygen, which of course humans need to survive. Some further food for thought is that plants can self-regenerate unlike humans. If you cut off part of a plant, it can often grow new roots. Alternatively, if you cut the top of a plant and leave or replant the roots, they will often grow a new plant.

The Great Gardens Of Great Britain by Andrew Babicz, March's meeting

 

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.