Winter Programme 2011-12
Meetings are held in Caversham Primary School Hall, Hemdean Road on alternate Wednesday evenings and commence at 7.30 p.m. For more information about the meeting format, see 'Pattern of a typical meeting'.
The outline of the programme of events for the Winter of 2011/12 is shown below. This is an impressive list of many familiar, highly competent and well respected speakers. The Winter Programme card, giving fuller details, will be circulated to members later in the Summer, nearer to the start of the Winter meetings.
| Date | Subject |
|---|---|
| 5 October 2011 | Our President and Chairman, Michael Keith-Lucas speaks on "Pollination - The Sex Life of Plants". |
| 19 October 2011 |
"An Evening with Alys Fowler"
Alys Fowler with Michael Keith-Lucas
Reading Gardeners’ celebrity lecture for the 2011-2012 winter season was given by Alys Fowler, renowned horticultural journalist, author and former Gardeners' World presenter. Her subject was "The Edible Garden", so concentrated on vegetables and their cultivation: her enthusiasm for the subject and the information presented made the talk very entertaining. Alys’ strategy for cultivating vegetables is unorthodox and revolutionary, resulting in her vegetable garden being very different from the conventional allotment garden with neat rows of varieties carefully protected from pests and diseases. Instead, she mixes seeds of many different vegetables and scatters them on her plots and in raised beds and boxes. This results in a succession of vegetables, starting with salads, moving on to leafy brassicas, beans and ending with root vegetables. This strategy aids organic gardening by eliminating monoculture: the host plants for the various garden diseases are not adjacent to each other, so insects cannot move easily from plant to plant. Pigeons, being stupid, like rows of plants and cannot cope with different crop plants growing mixed together. Alys made a very good impression, friendly and approachable. She has a Reading connection, having been a student at Reading University, where she attended a summer camp course headed by our Chairman, Michael Keith-Lucas. |
| 2 November 2011 | Rosy Hardy of Hardy's Cottage Garden Plants shares with us the trials and tribulations of running her own highly successful nursery. I have no doubt she will bring plants for sale.. |
| 16 November 2011 | Chris Ireland-Jones will talk on "Some Extraordinary Bulbs". His nursery regularly wins gold medals at RHS shows. Bulbs will be available to buy. |
| 30 November 2011 | Reading Gardeners had a very enjoyable visit to Knowle Gardens in September and had a return fixture on 30 November when Neil Lucas, the garden's owner and UK's leading expert in ornamental grasses, visited and talked about the use of grasses in gardens. In an entertaining and beautifully illustrated lecture he described many of the different grasses that are available to plant in the variety of condition that exist in our gardens. Although grasses are more fashionable than they once were, their changing beauty at different times of year is not generally appreciated. In addition, they are easy to grow and suppress weeds so are attractive plants to grow in modern gardens. Grasses will appear in Reading gardens in greater numbers in the near future! |
| 14 December 2011 | Our Christmas Social Evening. |
| 11 January 2012 | The audience was invited to name and list the plants in flower in their gardens in this most unusual winter. In all, 79 species and varieties were noted: this is certainly an underestimate due to the difficulty of thinking impromptu. Some of the flowers remain unfrosted from the autumn, such as Roses and Dahlias, others are flowering at the normal time, such as winter jasmine, Garrya, Hammamelis, Cyclamen coum, the first snowdrops and Leucojums, and yet others are spectacularly early, such as grape hyacinths, Chaenomeles, Crocuses and Forsythia. The weather normally restores the norm, so one fears that these blooms may be in for an ugly shock before the winter is over. |
| 25 January 2012 | Reading Gardeners were entertained by Val Bourne’s talk on 'Plant Lore and Legend'. She began with a reminder that our ancestors cultivated plants not just for food and decoration but also for health care. Inevitably some families may have died out by over-enthusiastic investigation of familiar plants like foxgloves, aquilegias and monkshoods. Many of the popular and botanical names of plants now used reflect their use by ancient herbalists: other names indicate connections with ancient Greek, Roman and even Persian mythology. Her talk focused on some important plant families, such as poppies, irises, anemones, carnations and pinks and included amusing anecdotes to do with the naming of recent cultivars of some of these plants. Val illustrated her talk with many images of plants and offered for sale her various books to do with gardening and garden design. |
| 8 February 2012 | Members' Evening. Seven or eight Reading Gardeners will make brief presentations to their fellow members. The topics range from 'an illustrated talk on a French and Italian garden' to 'keeping chickens in a gardening environment' and from 'vegetable growing' to 'samples of plants currently in flower'. One member will seek planting and design suggestions from the audience for a new garden plot. Visitors are very welcome to join us (at £2 per person) for what promises to be a varied, interesting and entertaining evening. We start with tea and coffee at 7.30 p.m. and a selection of complimentary homemade cakes donated by Committee members. We look forward to seeing you there. |
| 22 February 2012 | The return of another favourite speaker, Bob Brown of Cotswold Garden Flowers nursery will entertain us with "Plants Grow in Dirt". There will be plants for sale. |
| 7 March 2012 | Another tried and tested speaker, Kevin Hughes, advises us what to plant in "The Dry-Shade Garden". More plants for sale! |
| 21 March 2012 | John Dransfield's work was devoted to palm tree research. He comes to us strongly recommended. His talk is entitled "The Madagascar giant suicide palm: a tale of tiger prawns, internet chatrooms and Madagascar". |
| 4 April 2012 | "Annual General Meeting" and Members' "Plant Sale". |
