Jim Paine, Walnut Tree Garden Nursery

How do plants tell the time? How and why do they communicate with each other? Did you know that some plants can generate enough heat to melt snow, whilst others nourish their young?

Jim Paine of the well-known Walnut Tree Garden Nursery will tell us about these and other fascinating secrets about the life of the plants in our gardens and in the countryside around us. Jim and Clare previously worked at the IUCN - UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre on Huntingdon Road, until moving to Norfolk to establish the Walnut Tree Garden Nursery in 1998.  The Nursery is a specialist nursery that propagates and sells a large variety of hardy garden plants, from well-loved classics, through to more unusual species and varieties, but as of Summer 2023 the nursery will  close as both partners work towards retiring. Jim will continue to give talks, and indulge his plant propagation addiction.

TABLE COMPETITiON - A flowering pot plant

Caroline Holmes

Caroline gave a talk to Chesterton Garden Club  on Zoom during Covid lockdown on The Poison garden at Alnwick Garden, she is returning to talk in person on Impressionists in their gardens. Caroline is a broadcaster on TV and radio, international lecturer and consultant.  She is Course Director University of Cambridge ICE International Summer Programme. She is the author of a number of books including;

Water lilies and Bory Latour-Marliac, the genius behind Monet’s water lilies.

The RHS Herbs for Gourmet Gardeners

Follies of Europe

Impressionists in their gardens

TABLE COMPETITION - small vase of brightest flowers and foliage from your garden

Chris Gibson, formerly at Natural England

The most frequent thing I am asked for is a list of the plants mentioned in the talk, and at long last, here it is!  This is far from being a comprehensive list of garden goodies (and baddies), just the ones that anyone who has seen the talk will have seen pictures of. Click here.

If you need more inspiration, there’s plenty out there, such as the website of the Wildlife Gardening Forum. Or better still, take a trip out to somewhere like the Beth Chatto Gardens, Elmstead Market, a few miles east of Colchester, wander round the garden on a warm day, see what the insects are visiting, and then go into the nursery and buy it, assuming your garden has the right conditions. Nature generally will point the way!

TABLE COMPETITION - Photo of wildlife in your garden OR an object featuring British wildlife.

Catherine Horwood

A TALK ON ZOOM - contact us here for a zoom link

Catherine Horwood is an English journalist, author and social historian who writes extensively on horticulture, garden design, and in fashion the history of dress. She is the authorised biographer of the British plantswoman, garden designer, and author, Beth Chatto. (best known for creating the Beth Chatto Gardens near Elmstead, Essex and described as ‘one of the most influential horticulturalists for the last 50 years’). Her biography, Beth Chatto: a life with plants won the European Garden Book of the Year award in 2020.

Tim Fuller, The Plantsman’s Preference

Tim Fuller is an ornamental grasses & woodland perennial specialist and is also a member of the RHS’s floral trial panel which recommends plants for the Award of Garden Merit.His nursery, the Plantsman’s Preference, is in Norfolk at South Lopham and specialises in hardy geraniums, ornamental grasses and unusual or rare herbaceous perennials. He maintains that he has an aversion to plants that need staking or dead- heading ( amen to that! ) Tim’s plants have been awarded gold and silver- gilt medals over the years and best in show at the Suffolk show in 2011 and 2012.

TABLE COMPETITION - An indoor fern

Ben Cijffers, Cultivate Gardens

Having worked across a range of industries from ecology to construction, Ben turned his attention to his true passion of Gardens, and in 2017 he started Cultivate Gardens Ltd.  The company quickly grew into a leader in design and landscaping in Cambridge, offering an end to end service from concept to completion. Ben and his team specialise in working with private homeowners to create contemporary and exciting gardens that respond to the challenges and vernacular of the city.

 Ben and his team are committed to working ethically, ecologically and thoughtfully, and are accredited Living Wage Foundation employers.

 Ben lives in Cambridge with his family, and likes to spend his spare time tending to the very first Cambridge garden he built, which is conveniently his own!

TABLE COMPETITION - a firework design of leaves

Lucy Skellorn, Foster Irises

When Lucy was growing up in her family home near Stowmarket, she remembered an oil painting of her great, great, grandfather hanging on the wall. As a child she was aware that he had something to do with irises but had no idea quite how famous he was in his day.

 He was, in fact, Sir Michael Foster, (1836 - 1907) physiologist, MP, teacher, writer and a passionate collector of irises, often referred to as ‘the father of iris breeding.’ He worked at Trinity College in Cambridge and lived at Gt Shelford where he spent his leisure time developing new irises. Much of his source material was brought back from such places as Turkey, the Middle East and China.

 Iris amas was developed from a specimen found in Turkey in 1885 and became a source for many hybrids, bred for larger flowers of a robust nature with prolific flowering. Sir Michael Foster introduced many new varieties including Mrs Horace Darwin, a white flower with purple veining, named after Charles Darwin’s daughter in law and Iris Caterina, one of Lucy’s favourites, with blue flowers and a good fragrance.

 Lucy has worked in in the gardens of Helmingham Hall and Ickworth House, amongst others. This encouraged Lucy’s mission to find as many of her great, great grandfather’s irises as possible. She now holds the official Foster iris collection in her garden in Ringshall, near Stowmarket.

Simon McWilliams from Hedgehog Plants and Garden Nursery

Jay and Simon love unusual plants and their nursery near to Bury St Edmnds was started in 2003 when they both gave up their jobs and became “Hedgehog Gardens”, a gardening service in and around Hopton, Suffolk where they built a steady client base and gained a good reputation.

In 2007 a local hard landscaping centre offered them the chance to run their very small plant section and they jumped at the chance, becoming “Hedgehog Plants & Gardens” in the process.

Initially Jay ran the plant section having grown plants since she was ‘knee high to a gnat’ whilst Simon continued with the gardening side of the business. However, they both quickly decided that simply buying in the same old plants that you see everywhere and selling them on wasn’t for them.

Slowly but surely they began growing other, more interesting hardy plants and introduced them to their customers. This went well and in 2008 they did their first ever plant fair at Wyken Vineyards in aid of SWWAG – Stanton Woodland & Wildlife Action Group. A fair we attended for many years.

So, to find the plant for your garden that no one else has, this is the nursery for you!

https://www.theinterestingplantnursery.co.uk/our-plants/

Michael Brown

‘A Bouquet of Weeds’ – We curse them and try to kill them, but in the past most of our common weeds were grown on purpose because they were useful; yes, even Ground Elder! Learn how to love your weeds and get your own back at the same time.

and Annual General Meeting with election of committee members

AND … review of summer plant project - all to bring their tradescantia or hellebore seedling.

An all day visit to Beth Chatto’s Garden. Beth Chatto's Plants and Gardens.  Exponent of the right plant for the right place there are many types of gardens to explore; gravel, water, scree, woodland and reservoir.  Coach departs from outside the Church of the Good Shepherd, Mansel Way CB4 2ET at 9.30 returning to Cambridge at approx. 5.30.  Café on site for lunches and refreshments. They take card payments only.

Cost: £26 includes entrance fee and coach.  Guests £30.  Bookings are open to  other garden clubs and members of the public in order to fill the places on the coach.

Click here to request a place

A visit to St Johns College Gardens, with a tour guided by the Head Gardener, David Austrin.  Meet at 2.15 at the College’s Great Gate on St John’s Street for the tour at 2.30.  Costs: Free for members, £5 for guests.  Click here to request a place

David Livermore, Honorary Secretary of the Bedfordshire Alpine Garden Society

The Alpine Garden Society is one of the largest specialist garden societies in the world. The Society has a wide interest in plants that encompass not only true alpine and mountain plants, but also small hardy herbaceous plants, hardy and half-hardy bulbs, hardy ferns, hardy succulents and small shrubs.

The Bedfordshire group began in 1986 and has being going strong ever since with regular monthly meetings, speaker evenings, a library and a very popular annual show.

Our guest speaker is Simon White, Garden Centre Manager of Peter Beales Roses.

Simon will show us how easy it is to grow the nation’s favourite flower up and around anything from arches to pergolas, walls and fences including north walls, up trees and in pots and containers, obelisks and rails and even free standing.

This Talk will show you that every Garden has somewhere that you would be able to grow a climber or Rambler Rose.

The late Peter Beales started the rose nursery in 1968 and started to specialize in the old fashioned style of shrub rose and climbers and ramblers. There are over 2.5 acres of display gardens at the nursery and Garden Centre in Attleborough Norfolk where most of the collection is showcased.

Our guest speaker is Fiona Rose from Arts and Crafts Living

More famous for his work inside the home, William Morris (1834-1896) made a significant impact on the evolution of the English garden. He considered the garden inseparable from the house, rejecting Victorian formality and instead drawing inspiration from medieval gardens.

This lecture examines his gardening principles drawing from Morris’s lectures, letters, poetry, and prose. It also explores his own gardens that served as an inspiration behind his flower-based designs: Red House, Kelmscott Manor, Kelmscott House and the garden at his factory Merton Abbey Works.

Fiona’s interest in the Arts & Crafts Movement and in particular William Morris, began in her teenage years when she fell in love with Morris’s wallpaper designs. In 2009 Fiona turned her passion for the Arts & Crafts Movement into a career by starting her own business selling home interiors featuring designs by the great C19th designers. She has been lecturing about topics related to the Arts & Crafts Movement since 2010 and is an accredited lecturer with The Arts Society.

Our guest speaker is Nicola Rotton from Bloom and Blossom. A cut flower enterprise in Cambridge which grows, and supplies, its own locally grown cut flowers for your table and home.

More information - click here

Our speaker tonight is Margaret Nimmo Smith.

Margaret has been a keen amateur gardener all her adult life and a founder member of the local NCCPG (now Plant Heritage) and HPS groups. In the past she has run the Spore Exchange for the British Pteridological Society and worked for 10 years at Monksilver Nursery propagating ferns.  More recently she has retired from running the U3AC Garden Group.  

Fashions in the Garden could be translated into fashions in garden plants or my garden journey with plants.  Margaret will talk about her early gardening influences, how plant buying has changed and how fashion in plants and style of planting has developed over the last 50 years. Take a trip down memory lane and back into the future!

Fun and festivities. Join us for this social event to mark the end of a very interested term of talks and meetings. More information to follow …

The party will be held at St Laurence’s Church Hall, 91 Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 1XB

 All are welcome, members free, guests £5

Nigel Start will talk to us on a topic often raising more questions than answers, now we can get the benefit of an expert!

Nigel Start will bring a lifetime of experience and knowledge on all aspects of pruning. 

Why prune anyway?  To control the overall size, to form a shape, encourage flowers, stimulate fruiting, promote beautiful leaves and colourful stems.  Be clear about your objective; it will stop you from cutting back branches at the wrong time just because they have grown too big.  Pruning at the wrong time may result in a very sad plant or even its demise.

Ensure you use the best quality tools with sharp blades that will make clean cuts that heal  quickly whether secateurs, loppers or even a bow saw. 

Nigel will explain the right pruning times for a large number of plants.  A good rule of thumb is to prune after flowering and avoid severe frost. 

The meeting will be held at St Laurence’s Church Hall, 91 Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 1XB

 All are welcome, members free, guests £5

Ellen Ann Willmott FLS VMH was an English horticulturist. She was an influential member of the Royal Horticultural Society, and a recipient of the first Victoria Medal of Honour, awarded to British horticulturists living in the UK by the society, in 1897. Willmott was said to have cultivated more than 100,000 species and cultivars of plants and sponsored expeditions to discover new species. Inherited wealth allowed Willmott to buy large gardens in France and Italy to add to the garden at her home, Warley Place in Essex. More than 60 plants have been named after her or her home, Warley Place.

One of her most ambitious developments was an alpine garden, including a gorge and a rockery, which Ellen's father gave her permission to create on her 21st birthday.

Respected and honoured by her peers, Ellen Ann Willmott; plantswoman, botanist, author and admired gardener, was one of the great personalities of British gardening. Willmott’s thirty acre garden, Warley Place, near Brentwood in Essex was once one of the most beautiful and interesting of English gardens.

The garden had fallen into neglect but has now been restored by an enthusiastic team of volunteers, although not in its original form.

Ellen Willmott was born in 1858 and died in 1875.

Andrew Sankey, Landscaper and garden designer will talk about this fascinating and often misunderstood, remarkable plantwoman.

The meeting will be held at St Laurence’s Church Hall, 91 Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 1XB

All are welcome, members free, guests £5

Fergus Garrett is an English plantsman, horticultural educationalist and Head Gardener at Great Dixter, the garden of the late Christopher Lloyd; he is giving a special talk to Chesterton Garden Club.
Fergus is described as one of the most influential living garden designers and horticultural educators in Britain today.

Click here for more information on Fergus and his passion for gardens, gardening and design.

We are delighted to welcome Fergus to give a bespoke talk to our club on zoom.

This is a unique opportunity to hear from Fergus and to ask questions..

To join the club to hear this special talk please click here.

Come to our AGM and see who gets elected on to the committee, or maybe you would like to stand for office, or perhaps you would like to make suggestions about the future programme. If you are interested in joining the committee, and have skills and energy to share please click here.

Following the formal part of the meeting, there will be a range of presentations from club members and a gardening question time.

The meeting will be held at St Laurence’s Church Hall, 91 Milton Road, Cambridge CB4 1XB

 All are welcome, members free, guests £5

Click here to print the AGM Agenda

Home to four of the most spectacular Norfolk gardens, including a stunning meadow and the most beautiful of lakeside environments, Pensthorpe Natural Park provides year-round colour and interest. Explore these Norfolk walks, and discover the inspiring sculptures, stunning landscapes and diverse habitats, as they develop through the seasons, achieved with varying levels of horticultural management, in wildlife-rich gardens created by award-winning designers. Click here for more information about Pensthorpe.

Click here to apply for a ticket

Fullers Mill, has been awarded a regional winner in the RHS Partner Garden of the Year for the Midlands and East Anglia region, as voted by RHS members. The theme for this year was ‘Feel Good Gardens’, in recognition of the positive impact gardens have on our physical and mental wellbeing.

Visitors at Fullers Mill can explore the magical gardens around the Mill Pond planted with massed primulas, the majestic displays of lilies in the Top Garden, the Strip with its bed of sun-loving plants and views across the lake, and the Low Garden where the mix of shady areas and sunny glades offers ideal conditions for a whole range of charming woodland plants.

Click here for more information about Fullers Mill

Click here to book a ticket

Owner and hemerocallis expert Paula Dyason hosts this open day to her specialist nursery.

Click here for more informaiton about Paula, her passion and her incredible collection of hemerocallis

To join the club visit to Strictly Daylilies please click here

Visit us again for plants, tomatoes and seedlings. The carnival is a fun day packed with lots of things to see and do.

VENUE - Campkin Road, adjacent to the Arbury Community Centre

Come to our plant sale for interesting plants and vegetables.

VENUE - St Lawrence Church Car Park, 91 Milton Road, Cambridge

Paula Dyason from Strictly Daylilies runs a specialist nursery based in Histon. Paula’s mother was an enthusiastic collector with over 200 varieties and passed her passion to her daughter. The garden collection rapidly expanded with daylily plants coming from many sources. In 2012 a large collection of daylilies was purchased and Strictly Daylilies Ltd was born. With over 87,000 registered varieties of hemerocallis, there’s plenty to go on as a specialist. The number of plants in stock has risen to over 25,000 with approximately 2,000 different varieties. The nursery now has 5 acres of land and the business has become one of the largest growers of daylilies in the UK. Meanwhile Paula has begun significant breeding programmes producing 7,000 to 10,000 seedlings each year with a focus on clear bright colours and patterned unusual forms with excellent plant habits suited for the UK climate.

Venue : St Laurence Church Hall, 91 Milton Rd, Cambridge CB4 1XB

Competition : a photograph of your pond

Colin Ward of Swines Meadow farm Nursery is based in Market Deeping on the edge of the fens near Peterborough. Colin grows a large number of rare and unusual plants at the nursery, a small family run business for over 16 years. “When we first started, our main interests were in hardy exotics, encompassing bamboo, palms, gingers and cannas. However as our garden evolved so did our interests and desire to grow the less common and unusual. This interest and passion has never faded. We consider ourselves a plantsman’s nursery,  constantly evolving and looking to increasing our repertoire of plants.”

Venue : St Laurence Church Hall, 91 Milton Rd, Cambridge CB4 1XB

Table Competition : Yellow flowers from your garden

Geoff Hodge from Garden Forum Horticulture will give a presentation on drought resistant plants. We are in a very dry area and the rainfall seems to be decreasing, so this is just what we need.

Venue : St Laurence Church Hall, 91 Milton Rd, Cambridge CB4 1XB

Table Competition : Seed heads