Thanks to Molly and Trevor for sending this photo of one of quite a few hedgehogs which visit their garden.
Another photo seems to be of foxes. I live across the road from Molly and have always wondered if foxes visit our garden, but have never seen one. This photo shows they are around – I suspect they are after the hedgehog food!
The weather has been lovely the past few days and I’ve been getting on with the autumn tidy. However, taking a break from gardening is sometimes a good idea and I thought you might like the Christmas Cake Recipe below from Lynda Pewsey. Lynda’s cakes are famous and always do brilliantly in the Summer Show (😢).
Here is the recipe for her cake.
Please let Lynda know if you make it – you can email her via the Contact Us tab.
Since we are a Garden Club after all, here is a picture taken today of my gazanias. I will definitely be growing these next year.
Do send me a photo if you have colour left in your garden.
I am about to divide my hostas – should have been done a few years ago, but definitely going to do it this year. So, from tomorrow (October 17th) I will have bare-root hostas to give away to anyone wanting some. I’m afraid the plant labels got lost years ago, but the photo below gives you some idea of the varieties I have.
Someone just came and took all 12 of my divided hostas! And the ones I still have will have far more growing space next season. The two on the left on the photo below will be divided tomorrow.
Hostas divided
NT Overbecks in mid-September 2020
Overbecks looking glorious in the early autumn sun on 17th September. There was a clearly defined one-way system and no problem keeping distance. The cafe and house are closed, but the staff are as welcoming as ever.
I bought some tomatoes from a well-known supermarket and was pleased with how tasty they were. It turned out they were British, and grown in West Sussex by Chris Wall. The company is called Eric Wall Ltd. You might like to have a look at their interesting website.
Pam’s tomatoes looking great
My tomatoes are only just starting to ripen, but I know that a few of my neighbours have been harvesting theirs for a few weeks.
Nearly ready to eat
If any of your veg are looking as good as these sungold tomatoes, please send me a photo and some details and I’ll post your photos here. You don’t need to be a member of the Garden Club.
His tomatoes here are Shirley, grafted onto a more vigorous rootstock, from Sutton’s, which by the way, offers Club members a generous discount on seeds. Nigel predicts a huge harvest.
Nigel reports that his sweet corn plants are “absolutely huge” this year. Hope you get lots of sun to ripen the cobs.
And finally, a basket of early veg.
Thanks for the photos, Nigel.
Folks, if you send me photos, I will post them here
I am going to sneak in one of my own. This is Dahlia “Nell Gynne” – the flower is truly blowsy and nearly 7 inches wide.
National Garden Scheme 2020
Two of our members’ gardens were open this year, for what was a very different NGS weekend.
Ashwell, a large steeply-sloping garden with a vineyard, is situated close to the centre of Bovey Tracey and looked perfect as always.
Club member Jeanette Pearce raises extra money for the NGS charities by selling jams from her extensive soft fruit areas and also wine from her vines.
2 Redwoods belongs to Club chairman, Julia Mooney, and it was especially good to see recent hard landscaping, clearly carried out by a perfectionist! A garden of two parts – a shady fernery and a sunny gravel garden, with a leat running between them.
The garden we were asked to start at was Gleam Tor, the lovely garden belonging to Gillian and Colin Liddy, with its long herbaceous borders, wild flower area and prairie planting. We missed Colin’s wonderful afternoon tea, however. Maybe next year.
Many thanks to these garden owners for agreeing to open their gardens in the present circumstances. They are three very different gardens and it was clear that visitors were greatly enjoying the chance to “do normal things” again.
Life is just a Bed of Roses (though perhaps not at the moment)
Photos below from rose-grower Roger Hottot.
Roger has been winning the rose classes in the Bovey Tracey Garden Club Summer Show for many years.
Roger receiving the Sir Ben Smith Rose Bowl for his rose entries in 2019.
If anyone knows anything about Sir Ben, we’d like to hear about him.
Thank goodness for our gardens. Everyone I know has been spending lots of time gardening and I imagine Bovey gardens are as near perfect as is possible. Sadly, we cannot visit our friends’ gardens, so if you have a photo I will post it here.
The evening began with the Chairman appealing for donation of cakes for the Spring Show, for two boilermen for the Summer Show, and for contributions for the Club website.
Robin Hill then took over and gave us a very enjoyable talk on the changes over the years to the garden in Belstone, near Oakhampton, which his parents came to from Hertfordshire in 1967. It turned out that many of her members had been to Andrew’s Corner.
Gardening at an altitude of around 1,000 feet is challenging and Robin’s policy is very much to find the right plants for the conditions.
In 1972 you would have found lots of dwarf conifers and heathers in the garden, but heathers like an open situation and as the conifers grew they created shade, so the heathers stopped thriving and were replaced.
The Hill family, Robin, Edwina and their children, moved to Andrew’s Corner in 1979 and a few years later borrowed some of their neighbour’s land for their veg garden and for grazing for their goats.
A storm in 1990 brought down 20 of their trees along with the steeple of nearby St. John the Baptist Church, Hatherleigh. Another extreme weather event occurred in the winter of 2010/11, when there was heavy snow and temperatures of below 15 deg C.
The garden in April
Andrew’s corner is normally open to the public in February for snowdrop viewing – they have over 100 varieties. An early herald of spring is also the winter aconites such as Eranthis hyemalis.
And again in May
Robin showed us a huge selection of the plants he grows, many of which prefer acid soil. (Sadly, my garden has slightly alkaline soil.) He has a particular love of acers and particularly recommends erythronium such as the lovely “White Beauty” below.
Erythronium White Beauty
The ones I particularly liked were: Carolina spice (Calycanthus floridus), the Chilean Fire Bush (Embothreum coccineum) and the Scottish Flame Bush (Tropaeolum speciosum).
If you’d like to learn more about this interesting garden, or to visit it, you can find Robin’s website at Andrew’s Corner.