2016 Growing Challenge
Do you like a challenge? The 2016 gardening challenge was launched last month by our chairperson Daisy. After a successful Tomato Growing Challenge last year, this time it’s a quite different theme: “What can you grow in one pot?” Daisy suggested a medium-sized (about 20 cm diameter) plant pot, either plastic or terracotta, whichever you prefer. You can grow whatever you like, however, you need to be able to bring your pot along to the August meeting, so try and make sure it won’t be too heavy or awkward to lift. As with all our challenges, it is not a competition, just good fun and a chance to be creative.
Meetings Update
We had an excellent meeting on March 16th when Keith Treadaway gave a very informative talk on Clematis and how we could have Clematis in flower all the year round, by choosing the right varieties. He showed us examples of the different Clematis categories, explaining which were relatively easy to grow, along with those that were rather tender or prone to disease, and concluded with a summary of how to plant, care for and most importantly prune them. For those who were not able to make the meeting, or weren’t able to get a handout on the night, Keith’s list of all the Clematis he mentioned or illustrated in his talk is shown below – remember that not all those in the list are necessarily suitable for our gardens so it is best to look them up before buying. Keith also gave out another handout with a few useful addresses and some basic tips which is shown below the list. His garden, ‘Rosewood’ is open for the NGS on 17th July – for more info click here.
Our next meeting is on April 20th at 7.30pm when we welcome back Richard Cain from Penlan Perennials. The theme of Richard’s talk this time is ‘Colourful Shade’ and he will also be bringing some of his excellent plants for us to buy. Penlan Perennials in N. Pembrokeshire specialise in hardy plants used to coping with low temperatures and high rainfall. The nursery is completely organic and has recently won an Environmental Excellence Award from Horticulture Wales. Click on the link to go to their website, penlanperennials.co.uk , to learn more. We do hope you will be able to come and join us for what will prove to be a highly informative and enjoyable evening.
The Plant Shop – this has started well so please do come and support it at each meeting. Remember: good quality, potted up, labelled, and priced plants to be donated. A table will be set up for the ‘Plant Shop’ at the back of the hall, with a tin for the money to be left in. Please price your donation/s according to size of pot, type of plant and so that it reflects the true value while being less than a garden centre would charge. This way those purchasing will have a good quality product at an advantageous price.
Many thanks to Anne for this excellent suggestion to help increase club funds and provide a little plant retail therapy for all members without breaking the bank! Do try and find something to bring/be prepared to buy/both (!) at our next meeting:
Wednesday 16th March when Keith Treadaway will be talking to us about Clematis – Start time of 7.30pm
Clematis montana ‘Broughton Star’
PLANT SHOP AT COTHI GARDENERS MONTHLY MEETINGS
By definition all Cothi Garden Club members are likely to be plant lovers. Therefore it makes sense to have a stall at each of our meetings where plants can be purchased. This can then raise much needed funds for the continuation of the club and also feed our ‘plant habits’! Surely a ‘win- win’ situation.
This is therefore a request for good quality, potted up, labelled, and priced plants to be donated each meeting. A table will be set up for such a ‘Plant Shop’ at the back of the hall, with a tin for the money to be left in. Please price your donation/s according to size of pot, type of plant and so that it reflects the true value while being less than a garden centre would charge. This way those purchasing will have a good quality product at an advantageous price- again a ‘win – win’ situation!
It would be good if the ‘Plant Shop’ involved as many members as possible. It is understood that not everyone will be in a position to offer plants so perhaps they could consider purchasing one instead so that this is a fully inclusive venture.
The Plant Shop will be open for business before the meeting while refreshments are served so it will not be competition for any of the speakers who may also be selling their plants after their talks. Please remember to take home your unsold plants at the end of the meeting.
Many thanks and look forward to seeing what interesting plants are available for sale.
Gardeners’ World
Saturday March 5th at 8pm (Friday March 4th if you are in England!)
Gelli Uchaf Garden
We were rather pleased to get a call from a BBC2 Gardeners’ World researcher a few weeks ago asking about what Spring bulbs we grew and a bit of background to the garden and ourselves. We were told decisions would be made whether to come and see if we were suitable in the next few days…… a call duly came through and a visit from the recce team was scheduled for the following week. Two very nice chaps came and spent a couple of hours with us walking round the garden and chatting in cold, mizzly conditions while recording it all on a hand held video camera. Now we have been down this path before with the Beeb and it is at this point that we don’t hear anything further – for whatever reason we haven’t been quite what they were looking for. So we were more than a little surprised but delighted to get a call a couple of days after the recce to arrange dates for filming the following week.
Filming crocus in the snow!
Crocus opening in some sunshine
Another take – in the rain!
Filming Carol Klein as dusk falls
We would have to say it was the garden with its profusion of early spring flowers – Cyclamen, Snowdrops, Hellebores, Iris reticulata, Scilla mischtschenkoana et al all doing their best to impress, rather than the 2 gardeners that convinced the Beeb to come. The weather threw everything at us, mercifully with the exception of strong winds, which was brilliant as it demonstrated just what these wonderful Spring plants have to cope with and yet still manage to delight us with their early colour.
The three days of filming, one with the full team of five including the lovely Carol Klein, will be condensed down to about 6 minutes and will be broadcast in the first episode of the new series of BBC2 Gardeners’ World on Friday 4th March if you live in England, and Saturday 5th March at 8.30pm if you live in Wales.
You can read a write-up about it on the NGS website by following this link:
or our own blog/website by following this link:
https://thegardenimpressionists.com/2016/02/15/tarka-on-stage-imogen-and-typhoon-tv-funny-valentine/
Fiona and Julian Wormald
Now that one of the wettest winters on record is behind us, Cothi Gardeners have launched their 2016 programme.
At our February meeting we learned much about photography in the garden from Mary Pipkin; from how to use the various functions on our cameras to composing the scene or subject before actually taking the photograph. A really practical and informative evening which will hopefully improve our ability to take great pictures of our garden favourites. Below is one of Mary’s beautiful photographs many of which she brought to show us.
On March 16th at 7.30pm we are looking forward to our next speaker, Keith Treadaway, who will inspire us with his talk about the ever-popular Clematis. Join us to hear his advice on choosing the right species, where to plant them and how to look after them.
Keith has a wonderful collection of clematis at his garden near Tenby which is open to visitors under the NGS – definitely worth a visit. For details click here.
Photo by Keith Treadaway
Further speakers this year will include experts on perennials, growing vegetables and roses. We will also welcome representatives from some local gardens which are open to the public. For full details please contact Daisy on 01558 650829.
Cothi Gardeners meet at the Coronation Hall, Pumsaint on the third Wednesday of each month at 7.30pm. Annual membership costs £14, visitors and guests are most welcome too, £3 including refreshments.
This is a time of reflection and new beginnings, and here are a few updates. At the start of 2015 the club agreed to support a charity for the first time; The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. Money collected from the plants, seeds, books and other garden effects donated at each meeting and at a plant swap, over the year amounted to a healthy £332.16. In addition, Jane’s Open Garden Party held in July raised an amazing £4582.62. Many thanks to everyone who supported this charity.
Back in November at our last meeting of 2015, we were guided through the different methods of plant propagation by market gardener Michelle Drayton. She and her husband Phil, sell produce from their Temple Bar smallholding at local farmers markets. Michelle covered plant division, taking cuttings, layering, grafting and budding and of course seed sowing. We shall be able to get started on some of those techniques over the next few weeks to provide new plants for the coming season.
In December our annual Christmas lunch was held this year at The Angel in Llandeilo with over 30 club members enjoying socializing and the traditional fare provided.
The New Year sees a change in some of the committee personnel and a programme for the speakers and events of 2016 will be published. The February meeting at 7pm on Wednesday 17th is titled ‘A Photographer in the Garden’ with Mary Pipkin. Do join us and bring along your camera and flower and foliage to photograph. Should be fun. The March meeting will be Keith Treadaway giving a talk on Clematis.
A very Happy New Year to you all.
Llinos sent the following photos of the snowdrops at Colesbourne Park to cheer us up amidst all the rain! Click here to see their website
Apologies for the lack of activity on the website/blog over the last few months but we have been without internet since the beginning of November. A new satellite system has now been installed so we will (hopefully) be back in action from now onwards.
The incessant rain over the last months and the unseasonable warmth we have experienced have combined to make gardening both miserable and surprising! Weeding and general maintenance have been challenging with the ground badly waterlogged and many bulbs (including a poor deluded Camassia) and other early flowering plants have been out weeks earlier than normal with us.
Hellebores and Cyclamen
Daphne Jaqueline Postl started flowering in early December this year
Looking forward to meeting up again at the AGM on Wednesday 20th January.
Who were the real stars of last Thursday? The wonderful enthusiasm and communication skills of our speaker? The gorgeous late autumnal light? Our massed Persicaria vaccinifolia and Saxifrage fortunei?
No, on reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that whilst all of these were critical to such a successful day, the really important feature was the mix of gardeners who’d travelled to this remote part of the UK to learn and share with Dr. Noel Kingsbury and indeed each other. Several had driven over 100 miles, and so had to make more than a day of it. One of our happy band, a garden designer from Pennsylvania had even flown over from the USA to take part – and built a family holiday around this event. There was a warmth, enthusiasm and good humour to the whole day, which I think everyone benefited from.
Such is the high regard for Noel’s pretty unique blend of knowledge, not just of gardens and their design, but more crucially of plant growth, ecology and their interactions – something one reads or hears about very rarely in the mainstream garden media. And a key subject in assessing how plants will perform in a garden setting over the medium to long term. As well as how much intervention is likely to be necessary to achieve one’s desired aims.
When we’d thought about volunteering to host such an event we’d (typically) probably not thought as much as we should about how we would have coped in the atrocious weather that can sometimes hit around now. Although the day before was wet and windy, and played havoc with my attempts to keep paths leaf free, Thursday dawned dry and by the time the first folk were arriving, blue sky was beginning to appear.
Noel kicked off with a discussion considering an imaginary plot of bare soil, and, left un- managed, how it would become colonised over 1, 2, 3, 5,10, 50 and 100 years. An intriguing way of thinking about firstly what natural trends we are seeking to combat or control in our role as garden designers and managers. ( A hint of the default 100 year dominant landscape plant in this part of the world – a seedling oak at the base of a Japanese Maple, below)…
Secondly of what strategies plants have to out compete or simply survive amongst their neighbours, and indeed thirdly the likely futility over the very long term (without generational garden management) of combating these natural ecological trends of plant succession.
And very helpful ideas for any gardeners like us, who are facing the inevitable slowing down that comes with ageing, and want to try the steer the garden into a lower maintenance phase, without losing its inherent appeal. (How many different plant species inhabit the small section of ground above? How much weeding is necessary here? And what does it look like in April or May? See the end of post for more).
I remember reading a letter in the RHS Garden magazine recently from a gardener nearing the point of having to let go of a garden lovingly created over 20 years, and then enjoyed for another 10, but now beginning to become too much to manage. When to let go? Perhaps we need to move into more of an enjoyment stage after 20 years of creating, and stop fiddling! Not that we haven’t enjoyed the journey so far…
Group discussions followed together with a good power point talk to flesh out more about examples of different types of ‘perennials’. Just howperennial they might be, and how by examining growth and flowering habits gardeners can work this out for themselves, by considering taking the rabbit’s eye view of what the plant looks like at ground level. (Clonal Asters growing through Saxifrage below)…
By lunchtime the weather was sufficiently sunny for many to take food outside to eat – pretty rare for us in late October, and later, the afternoon session took the form of a garden based walk looking at how we’ve used plants within the garden in a sometimes unique way based on the conditions which we have to deal with up here. Again we all learned much from Noel’s thoughts and ideas and group involvement. The day finished with more cakes and tea, before everyone headed home.
Keen to try to find out what visitors thought about the day, we were very grateful to everyone for filling out a simple end of event questionnaire. Only 1 other participant had ever been on a garden based workshop before, and everyone ranked the day as both excellent, and also excellent value for money (from excellent, good, average, disappointing). And it was great that as well as making it non profit making, we were still able to donate part of everyone’s fee as a garden entrance charge to the National Gardens Scheme charities.
Would we ever do it again? Well Noel has clearly led such workshops all over the world, and he would be a very difficult act to follow, such were his knowledge, teaching and communications skills. But it was such a success that maybe some similar event might happen again, perhaps at a different time of the year.
The Cothi Gardeners meeting in July was entitled Saving Our Magnificent Meadows. This Lottery funded 3 year project is aimed at targeting 9 areas of wild flower meadows and grassland across the UK, raising awareness of the plight of such rare and fast disappearing special places and giving the public access and information. The talk was given by two National Trust employees based at Llanerchaeron who are involved in the part of this UK wide scheme in Ceredigion. Several National Trust farms in the county are involved in the project and we were given information about how they are tackling the problems of bracken and over grazing in order to encourage greater diversity of flowers in the grassland.
More information can be found at http://www.magnificentmeadows.org.uk/
Anyone interested in meadows locally can find out more on the Carmarthenshire Meadows website by clicking here.
Meadow at Cwmdu
The Cothi Gardening Club has much to look forward to in the coming months.
The August meeting on Wednesday 26th at 7.30pm is the Members Medley
The meeting will kick off with a review of the “Tomato Challenge”, so please bring a selection of fruit if you have them! Then there will be short presentations in 4 areas of the hall, followed by a buffet style refreshment. Can you please provide a plate of savoury or sweet items, drinks will be provided by the Club.
The intention is to have a casual, informative meeting sharing our knowledge/ skills and disasters!
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At our September meeting on the 16th the talk is entitled South West China-Sourcing plants for our Climate and is given by the well known John Shipton.
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Looking to the following month of October we are very pleased to welcome Dr Noel Kingsbury the internationally known writer about plants, gardening and the environment. He is giving his popular and entertaining talk entitled, Women, Men and Gardening at 7.30pm on the 21st. Entrance to this event is £5 (free for members) including refreshments.
Please see our events page for more details
Guests and prospective new members are always welcome, so do come along and join us.
June Meeting – Pests and how to get rid of them
George Sykes an entomologist gave us a fascinating and most informative talk using his wealth of experience advising governments at home and overseas to maximise crop productivity. He explained that the natural system is in equilibrium, but cultivating a garden upsets that, giving an opportunity for some species to multiply and become pests. He took us through the history of chemical controls to less invasive ways of dealing with common garden trials. He finished by saying that in many ways the human thumb is the best biological control! An informative and entertaining evening.
Ideas for controlling pests and weeds were also suggested by members during discussions after the talk such as milk for controlling mildew and ‘Grazers’ for controlling damage by rabbits, deer, pigeons and geese (http://www.grazers.co.uk/). See the gardening tips page for more information.
Inspirational Visit – Llanllyr Garden
On Sunday 28th June Cothi Gardeners had their inaugural ‘Inspirational Visit’ to Llanllyr garden at Talsarn (https://www.facebook.com/Llanllyr). We enjoyed the sunshine and were shown around the wonderful and indeed inspiring gardens by their creators Mr and Mrs Gee, the current owners of the property. Highlights were the rose garden which was in full bloom, the scents and colours quite amazing, the pool and the random flowering of white foxgloves throughout the garden giving a unity to the whole. The afternoon finished with a Welsh tea on the lawn – perfect!
Gathering in the car park
Chatting during the tour
Cothi Gardeners 