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.

Shroedinger's Garden, Guy Deakins February's zoom talk.

In February 2025 we hold our monthly meeting on Zoom. The weather can often be poor and it is also a chance for us to share our meeting with Tendershoots. In exchange we are entitled to attend the talks that are arranged by other clubs in the Tendershoots network. This is the website address for Tendershoots if you would like to see what else is on offer: https://tendershoots.uk/ Check out the ‘Programme’ tab. Some talks are recorded and available to watch on catch-up.

Guy Deakins was our speaker who spoke to us on the topic of ‘Shroedinger’s Garden’. Shroedinger came up with the philosophy of ‘If you can’t see something it doesn’t exist’. Guy himself had studied psychology but now lectures at Capel Manor Horticultural College (our nearest open garden which many of you have probably visited). Guy’s talk was about the psychology of gardens, how we look at a garden and what we see because of the way we look at the garden.

He told us that different parts of our brains have different memory stores and we see how we are taught to see so we use preconceptions. The famous historic landscape gardener, Capability Brown arranged spaces to get us to see his gardens as landscapes, but they were an illusion. Gertrude Jekyll, another famous garden designer worked with Lutyens. He used mathematics to design the structure of gardens while Jekyll who apparently was very short sighted and could hardly see further than a few inches in front of her used tone and colour to design the planting.

Some psychological thoughts on gardens. If you are trying to hide something e.g. an ugly wall, then you are denying the reality. You should try and work with it (we may not agree). Japenese gardens are designed for the soul and the rocks are there as they are said to have a soul The more unhappy you feel the more you will seek unhappiness whereas in reverse if you feel happy you seek more happiness.

It was a very different type of talk. Thought provoking. It may make you look at your garden or any garden you visit in a different way.

 

 

Christmas Social/The Christmas Garden, talk December's meeting

For our December meeting this year we did our Christmas social slightly differently. Our falling   attendance numbers at meetings and the uncertainty of the weather at that time of year mean that we decided not to have an entertainer, but instead we had one of our favoured speakers to give us a talk on ‘The Christmas Garden’. This was followed by an opportunity for members to get together and mix and socialise while enjoying a bring and share buffet. Our thanks to Veronica Perry for suggesting the idea of the shared buffet and to everyone who contributed by bringing a dish or two.

The talk was an enjoyable tour of both indoor and outdoor plants that may grow and flower at Christmas, but also those that bloom at other times of the year but strangely have names suggesting Christmas. So we have the Christmas Rose (it’s a hellebore), Christmas box (Sarcococca), Christmas cactus (Indoor plant) and Poinsettia which do bloom at Christmas time. But then we have other plants like the fuschia ‘Hollys Beauty’ and ‘Santa Claus’, Tulip ‘Christmas Dream’ that as we all know don’t flower at Christmas at all. One of the most interesting facts that I learned was that in their natural habitat of Mexico and Central America Poinsettia’s can grow into 12 foot/small trees. In the UK they are sold as house plants that most people find difficult to care for after Christmas.

The bring and share buffet was fantastic. We had a range of dishes, many home made including Barbara Humm’s home made mince pies, Pasta salad, Barbecue chicken wings, special friend rice and Cheese Puffs (The recipe can be found below and is very east to make. They can be made in advance and frozen and cooked straight from the freezer).

We take on board that it would have been good to have some music accompaniment to the socialising and we will bear this in mind for next year.

We hope all our members had a good and healthy Christmas and New Year.