Spring is a busy time.....

Following an interesting talk by Shirly Boyle, head gardener at the RSPB Flatford Wildlife Garden, on Gardening for Wildlife at the joint meeting with the Conservation Society we hope to visit the Flatford project on the 11th May.  This will be a visit by car and we have several members who would be willing to drive other members – please let Lorraine know if you are interested in coming.  The plan is to leave Nayland at 2pm.  Entry to the garden is free.  The National Trust’s Bridge House Tearoom is a stone’s throw away from the garden for those who would like refreshments. 

This year's Morning Market and Coffee Morning will be a week later than usual, on 26th May in the Church Hall from 9.30am.  Donations for the raffle and stalls – plants (including bedding and vegetables), books, preserves and cakes - would be much appreciated.  These can be brought along to the Church Hall from 8.30am on the morning of the Market or they can be left at 60 Bear Street a day or two before the event. 

A week later the whole country will be celebrating Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee and HortSoc are planning a 1950s exhibition and flower display in St James Church. We are appealing  for anything you may have in your loft, lingering from that period; social and domestic are two aspects that spring to mind. We hope to form a picture of what living was like 60 years ago. These were days of wartime rationing, pre-decimal coins, and Woolworths!  Not to mention radio Luxemburg, nipped in waists and Kayser Bondor net layered petticoats, Stanley Matthews, and Great Britain had an Empire. Wendy Sparrow, our Parish Recorder is appealing for photographs of past royal occasions for her display.  The Primary School has also been asked to contribute by children including work on a royal theme.

Following the popularity of previous coach outings another is planned, this time to East Ruston Old Vicarage Garden & Blacksmiths Cottage Nursery on 13th June – further details and a booking form can be found on the Events page. This is open to non-members, so please spread the word and invite your friends.  That said, these are popular garden venues which we believe will be very popular so book early to avoid disappointment. 

We have introduced a few new classes to our Annual Flower Show on 6th August see the Summer Show page.  The best scarecrow and the best hanging basket which will be judged in situ in the weeks prior to the show.  There are new classes for: sweet peas (vase),  collection of fruit (3 or more varieties), and the longest runner bean.  Subjects for the photography section will be ‘A Feature of Your Garden’  and ‘Signs of  Ageing’ (gnarled trees, old tools, crumbled walls, etc) and for the children ‘A Special Feature of Your Garden’ .The schedules for the show are now available in local shop and on and the Summer Show page. HortSoc are grateful to the advertisers who enable us to fund this promotion.

1950s Exhibition Poster

Outing to East Ruston Poster

Visit to RSPB Flatford Wildlife Garden

Morning Market Poster

What we have been getting up to in 2012:

Our horticultural year began on 20th March when the Church Hall was packed to capacity for an interesting talk by Terry Illsley on 'The Victorian Garden: the golden age of gardening'.  The Victorian period was celebrated for its progress, invention, new ideas and discoveries and improved transport gave rise to use of non-native plants and exotics.  There was a desire for gardens with ostentatious features, following the latest fashions and themes.  Wealthy Victorians also created public spaces and parks.

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, Joseph Paxton and Gertrude Jekyll were influential pioneers of the period.

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, an English landscape architect who designed over 170 parks in the latter half of the 1700s, had swept away all the remnants of previous formally patterned styles with undulating grass, clumps and scatterings of trees, serpentine lakes and grand ornate structures.  His work endures at Croome Court, Blenheim Palace, Warwick Castle and Chatsworth House.

In the early 1800s Joseph Paxton became head gardener to the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth House, where he designed the pinetum, the Rock Garden, the enormous Emperor Fountain and Emperor Lake, but he is best remembered for his glass houses.  During this period there was a desire to grow tender exotic plants and Paxton designed glasshouses suitable to meet their individual growing requirements.  He designed the Crystal Palace glasshouse to house the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Gertrude Jekyll was an influential garden designer, proplific writer and artist of the time, creating over 400 gardens.  She designed through her plantings rather than traditional design aspects and was one of the first of her profession to take into account the colour, texture, and experience of gardens when creating her designs.

Terry Illsley (top) & The Crystal Palace

Our third annual Spring Show on the 24th March attracted almost 70 entries, from 11 entrants. The judges felt the quality of the exhibits was even better that last year - results on Spring Show page. The warmer weather this spring has brought some plants forward which enabled greater number of entries in the Hyacinths and Camellia classes, and gave the opportunity to include more species in the mixed vases and arrangements.

A steady stream of visitors called in to enjoy refreshments and a chat in the colourful and fragrant atmosphere provided by the displays.

The show raised almost £100 for Society funds.  HortSoc would like to thank the judges, our helpers, those who donated prizes or cakes, the entrants and visitors for their support. You all make this a great start to our horticultural year.

On 31st March, during the Village Hall garden working party, a memorial plaque was positioned HortSoc’s section of the garden by Olive Willingale’s memorial tree.

'Olive's Tree', an Acer tataricum subsp. ginnala 'Flame', was planted last autumn.

The plaque which was beautifully carved by Tony Fryer reads: In memory of Olive Willingale, Secretary & President of Nayland & District Horticultural Society 1980-2011.

Click for larger view of the tree and plaque

Our chairman Trevor Smy welcomed members to the Annual General Meeting and Fun Quiz evening on Tuesday 17th April.

Following the fairly brief formalities, details of which are available on the Meetings page, members settled down to the find the solutions to the fun quiz with horticulture in mind.

No-one seemed stumped by which rock band gathered no moss, or whether peanuts grow on trees, but who played the lead role in the film 'The Rose' about the life of Janis Joplin sorted the wheat from the chaff. In the cryptic clues, one or two teams had trouble working out that the overworked girl was 'Busy Lizzie' and the German wine for Ivy's partner was 'Hollyhock'. In the visual section identifying a Hippeastrum (Amaryllis) wasn't straight forward for one or two teams. Of course, it's so easy when you know the answers!

The winners were 'The Guessers' with 'The Aces' just a point behind, in close pursuit were the 'Late Bloomers' and 'Yellow Roses' with half a point between them.

What we got up to in 2011:

Our horticultural year began with the sad news of the loss of Olive Willingale, our President.  Olive was a founder member when the Society was formed in 1981 and was Secretary for many years, in which time she was instrumental in establishing our Flower Show as a successful annual event.  We were pleased to be able to contribute in a small way at her service of thanksgiving with a floral tribute on the church altar and hope to be able to provide a more lasting tribute to Olive.

We are extremely grateful to John Millbank who stepped into the breach when our scheduled photography speaker was unable to attend our meeting on 15th March.  Quite unprepared and hoping to gain new photography tips rather than give them, John gave us all food for thought on composition of images, especially those for the calendar competition, and answered a host of questions from the audience.

Our second annual Spring Show on the 26th March attracted 70 entries, 17 up on last year and the judges felt the quality of the exhibits was good.  By contrast to last year’s very late departure of the winter weather, this year's warmer spring enabled greater number of entries in some classes, particularly the Hyacinth and Camellia classes - results on Spring Show page.

Visitors commented favourably on the event and the relaxing atmosphere in which to enjoy refreshments.  Although the show is not held as a fundraiser it raised just over £60 profit for Society funds.  HortSoc would like to thank the judges, all our helpers, those who donated prizes or cakes, all the entrants and visitors for their support.

Olive Willingale in 1980

In October to mark HortSoc's 30th anniversary in 2011 we held a daffidil planting morning to help mark this landmark year. We had to wait until spring to see the benefits but it was worthwhile.

Although this was a relatively small planting the display brightened the entrance to the village. The grass cutting contractors are very helpful in cutting round the planted areas until the foliage has died down and this will encourage the bulbs to form stronger, larger clumps in future years.

More photos on the Projects page.

Our chairman Trevor Smy welcomed members to the Annual General Meeting and Fun Quiz evening on Tuesday 19th April.

Following the fairly brief formalities and re-election of officers and committee Lorraine conducted the fun quiz which was enjoyed by all - no doubt because it was by request rather easy! Teams can be seen in the photograph, with their thinking caps on.

The winners were 'Blooming Roses' with 'Sunflowers' in second place after a tie-break with 'Spring Blossomers'.

The day after the AGM members of the committee were invited to visit the gardens of Muckspreader Hall. Readers of the Nayand with Wissington Community Times will know this is the home of its gardening columnist the Old Muckspeader.

It was an unseanonally warm day to enjoy the lovely tranquil garden. The OM/S showed us round, highlighting some of his best horticultural performers of the moment and answering our questions, of which there were many. We wandered through the varying aspects of the garden admiring the features and the plants.

The woodland areas were a particular favourite with the wild flowers, such as Fritillaria and Cowslips on display and in the glade the Bluebells will soon be putting on their show. Around the wildlife pond Hostas were growing well and as yet undamaged by snails and the Dierama talked about in his gardening column was springing into life.

We are very grateful to the OM/S and Lady M/S for their kind hospitality.

The Morning Market held on Saturday 21st May was a huge success raising a record figure of over £300. Proceeds from this fundraiser enable us to hold the annual Flower Show.

It was busy from the off as visitors snapped up the array of bedding, vegetable and perennial plants, delicious cakes and preserves, bargain books or had a flutter on the raffle. There was a very happy atmosphere to relax and enjoy refreshments with friends.

Trevor, Tom and Colin proved to be excellent novices on the plant stall and raffle whilst the rest of the HortSoc team beavered away elsewhere. Despite the hard work we all agreed it was a very enjoyable morning.

We are very grateful to everyone who supported the market by donating items for sale or for the raffle, helping us man the stalls or coming along on the day.

The coach outing to Great Dixter House and Garden and Merriments Gardens on 7th June proved to be another successful day out. Both venues had lovely features and interesting planting schemes.

Created over the last 15 years, Merriments Garden had wonderful colour themed curved borders planted to change with the seasons. Interesting features include a gravel garden, water garden and a rock and scree garden, a secret garden, a jewelled garden, and a bird watching hide.

Great Dixter is a charming 15th century timber-framed Tudor manor house set in one of the most beautiful and renowned gardens in England. The cottage gardens are on a grand scale, Lutyens designed the gardens as a series of rooms in which Christopher Lloyd was renowned for his flamboyant use of strong colour.

Whilst some said they had their favourite others said they were both equally enchanting gardens which provided plenty of food for thought. Both venues certainly displayed some fantastic planting compositions and they provided great inspiration for our own gardens.  Many of us returned home with great intentions after spending more than just time in the plant centres!

There are certainly plenty of smiling faces in the photos taken at the gardens shown on the photo gallery page. A few suggestions for venues to consider for an outing next year have been put forward but if you have any ideas do let us know.

The ingredients were just right for this year’s special summer garden party; in a period of unsettled weather even the sun beamed down, just for one day.  Over fifty members came along to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Society in the beautiful gardens at Parkers.

After welcome drinks Andrew guided us round the garden, revealing its bountiful variety of plants and produce. There was plenty to eat and drink a photo quiz to keep the grey matter ticking over and a display of HortSoc's activities since 1981 to recall days gone by. Strawberries and cream, a celebration toast and a 30th anniversay cake rounded off the festivities.

Pauline Horrell and Peggy Shreeve received prizes for amasingly identifying all the photos of the committee and other members in their youth while John Jervois and Margaret Smy took home prizes in the draw.  Huge thanks are due to the committee for their hard work putting it all together and especially to Andrew and Sue Gowen for their fantastic hospitality. 

Everyone said they thoroughly enjoyed the evening - the committee thank members for coming to share this special occasion.

Another Annual Flower Show has come and gone successfully, as reported on the Summer Show page.

The minibus was full for the outing to Helmingham Hall Gardens & Autumn Plant Fair on Sunday 18th September.  The showers forecast did not arrive thankfully and everyone enjoyed the day out. 

Although late in the season for flowers the gardens were beautifully kept and with a nineteenth century parterre, dramatic herbaceous, shrub, late summer borders, knot, rose & wild flower gardens, the Victorian kitchen garden and orchard, which were bursting with produce, there was something for everyone.  The magnificent house surrounded by a deer park was an impressive venue for the Plant Fair organised in partnership with Suffolk Plant Heritage, which had a wide variety of stalls.

Members returned home carrying armfuls of plants, and some rather pleased to have their queries successfully answered by the apple detectives and plant doctors.  Many thanks to Trevor for enabling the outing by being our driver for the day.

The weather was glorious on Saturday 15th October when a tree was planted in memory of Olive Willingale who died earlier this year.

Olive was a founder member of the Society when it was formed in 1981. She was Secretary for many years before becoming our President and was a keen supporter of our activities until the very end. Olive's husband, Ken said she loved HortSoc and will be especially thrilled as the tree will also replaced one that Olive planted for the Queen's Silver Jubilee, which was lost during the extension of the Village Hall.

Ken, helped plant the Acer tataricum subsp. ginnala 'Flame' in the HortSoc section of the Village Hall garden. The tree will have white flowers in the spring but is most renowned for its rich red foliage in autumn. It will now be known as 'Olive's Tree'.

With autumn dawning our activities retreated indoors on Tuesday 18th October when Matthew Tanton Brown, manager at The Place for Plants, returned to Nayland to talk about Vegetable Growing.

The Church hall was full as Matthew enlightened us on a variety of aspects of growing produce including; siting, crop rotation, pests and diseases, soil improvement, adding nutrients, companion planting and using containers for growing vegetables. Along the way he gave some useful and amusing tips including how to ward off Munjac deer - by scent marking your plot! 

At the joint meeting with the Conservation Society on Tuesday 8th November Shirley Boyle, head gardener at the RSPB Flatford Wildlife Garden, gave an interesting talk on Gardening for Wildlife. She also introduced the Flatford project, their first dedicated wildlife garden, which is coming to fruition on land bequeathed to the RSPB 10 years ago.

Shirley bagan by explaining that gardens make up 300,000 hectacres of land in Britain so making them wildlife friendly is vitally important and can help create corridors to enable safe wildlife movement. As well as providing year round food, water and nectar from flowers, it is important to provide good shelter and places to breed in the form of bird and insect boxes, log piles and hedges and shrubs.

By encouraging the wildlife at the bottom on the food chain it will benefit the predators all the way up the food chain. We will be rewarded by having a diverse range of insects, birds and animlas who will naturally help control pests on our plants.

Our stall at Nayland with Wissington Community Council's Christmas Family Fayre on 27th November was once again very successful in helping us raise funds towards the Society's running costs and holding the Flower Show.

We are very grateful to all those who supported the stall by donating items for sale, for the raffle, helping us man the stall or coming along on the day.

What we got up to in 2010:

The Morning Market in May was once again very successful in helping us raise funds towards holding the Flower Show.  We are very grateful to all those who supported the market by donating items for sale or raffle, helping us man the stalls or coming along on the day.

Our outing to RHS Wisley on 10th June proved to have something for everyone with its manicured gardens, herbaceous borders, water features and lakes, dramatic rock gardens, a wild garden, woodland, a fruit orchard and an impressive vegetable garden where everything was almost ‘too good to be true’.  The stunning glasshouse is divided into different zones containing plants from different habitats and houses an array of weird and wonderful exotic plants and orchids.  Wisley was an inspirational source of ideas for our own gardens and their plant centre offered a head start.

The weather was fairly kind to us, the coach was full and feedback has been very favourable which was quite a relief as it was the first coach outing we have organised.  We are now considering venues for an outing next year; Great Dixter, Audley End and Sandringham to name a few have been mentioned - if you have any ideas please let Lorraine know.  

The visit to Kings Seeds in Kelvedon on 6th July also proved popular.  After wandering round the gloriously scented sweet pea fields Peter Miller gave a brief history of the 100 year old company and a tour round the production units. It was very interesting to hear about the processes and tests the seed goes through and the regulations involved.  Nothing is done by hand and it is amazing to see how the cleaning machines remove the husks and debris following combining, and the cooling room dries the seeds to just 5% moisture. The seeds must be tested to ensure a germination rate of 80% - those that fail are destroyed by being ground up.  Their online seed catalogue can be found on www.kingsseeds.com.

The weather was kind for our Summer Party held by kind invitation of Andrew and Sue Gowen in their beautiful garden at Parker’s on 16th July.  After an interesting tour round the garden and some nibbles we set our minds to a wordsearch quiz cunningly created by Elizabeth Wakefield.  Some felt the wine helped in finding the words but the winners, Jacki Grant closely followed by Olive Noakes and John Jervios, didn’t seem to need any assistance!  In the membership draw Chris Hunt won a gardening voucher. 

Another Annual Flower Show has come and gone successfully, as reported on the Summer Show page.

In addition to our planned schedule of events on 14th September we set off in four cars to the Bulb Day at The Place For Plants, East Bergholt where Matthew Tanton Brown broadened our knowledge of autumn bulbs.  He gave us planting tips for naturalising and forcing bulbs and container planting and demonstrated planting suggestions for hanging baskets and pots.  His style is to ‘think outside the box’ and he included plant species not usually associated with container growing to create displays that were most attractive and would remain of interest all season.  We left inspired to create our own winter wonderland.

HortSoc will be celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2011. To help mark this landmark year we held a daffidil planting morning on Saturday 9th October 2010.

A group of members, watched by a few supporters, planted 230 native daffodils on Caley Green and the triangular green adjacent Bear Street. A small amount of top-up planting was done on the green-space at the entrance to Parkers Way.

We will have to wait until spring to see the benefits but in the meantime the photograph here and those on the projects page show some of the bulb planters in action!

Our autumn speaker, Peter Morris FNVS, was greeted to the Church Hall on 19th October during a power cut! After initial concerns it was decided to go ahead with an intimate candlelit talk but luckily the power came back on and Peter was able to use his slide projector to illustrate his vast experience of growing vegetables. 

During this very interesting talk Peter demonstrated the techniques of growing vegetables in deep beds as well as traditional methods.  Many of us were amazed by the amount of produce that could be grown in a small space with planning and crop rotation, and by the lack of weeds – there just wasn’t room for any!  He also demonstrated how to reclaim an allotment and how to grow and show vegetables and revealed a few tips on presentation. 

The evening ended with a free raffle of the fantastic selection of produce Peter had brought along and he also gave out some shallot sets and seed potatoes, which could give the recipients an advantage at next year’s Flower Show - if they heed his advice!

The joint meeting with the Conservation Society on 9th November was another enjoyable and enlightening evening.  Colin Hawes gave a fascinating insight into the spectacular Stag Beetle, Lucanus cervus, which is a protected species in the UK.

As stag beetles prefer the areas of Britain which have the highest temperatures, lowest rainfall and areas near to a river Nayland is an ideal location to spot them during their short adult life between May and August.  They prefer woodland edges, hedgerows and gardens with light soils as females have to dig down to bury their eggs and newly emerging adults have to find their way to the surface.

Astonishingly, their life cycle lasts 6 or 7 years with much of it spent underground.  Once they have mated, the females lay their eggs below ground against rotting deciduous wood, log piles or tree stumps. Once hatched into larvae they will feed on the decaying wood, which has little nutritional protein and accounts for their slow growth.  The larvae will build a cocoon underground to pupate and metamorphose into an adult, emerging from their cocoon in the autumn to spend the winter and spring in the soil until May.

We can help stag beetles by leaving old stumps and deadwood, building log piles and using untreated woodchip mulches. Further information can be found on www.greatstaghunt.org where sightings may be recorded with PTES. 

Colin would also be pleased to hear of your sightings via the recording form on the Suffolk Naturalists' Society website.

Our stall at the Community Council's Christmas Family Fayre in December was once again very successful in helping us raise funds towards the Society's running costs and holding the Flower Show.

We are very grateful to all those who supported the stall by donating items for the sale or raffle, helping us man the stall or coming along on the day.