Author: Pamela Adams

Green Fingers? Or just green with envy at other people’s success? Whatever your involvement in horticultural pursuits you will be made most welcome at the regular meetings of the Ticknall Garden Club.

John Stirland has been giving gardening advice on Radio Nottingham for 45 years so he knows a thing or two about gardening. When he came to talk to Ticknall Garden Club in March, he was a man on a mission. That was to convince his audience that Winter is a fantastic season of the year in the garden.

Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones travelled from Crug Farm Plants in North Wales to talk to Ticknall Garden Club at their January meeting. They diversified from farming in 1991 to the cultivation and sale of garden plants. Along with Kew Gardens they are the only people in England with a licence to bring back seeds and live plants into this country.

This year Ticknall Garden Club’s Christmas Social followed a most entertaining presentation from David Tideswell on caring for the birds in your garden in Winter. He has studied birds for many years and broadcasts on Radio Stoke and Derby.

At the June meeting of Ticknall Garden Club Philip Aubury gave an interesting talk on what he called “an oasis of delight”. This was in fact the Botanical Gardens at Edgbaston in Birmingham. Being a past director he knew a lot about its history. A Horticultural Society was founded in Birmingham as far back as 1829. This was at a time when plant hunting in foreign lands was bringing in many new discoveries to supplement the limited range of native species.

Brian Ellis suffers from a malady common to many gardeners. He sees a plant he likes and can’t help getting more in the same family and before you know it he has got himself a collection.

Ticknall Garden Club strayed from its usual subjects when it got a lesson in dry stone walling at the February meeting.Andrew Jackson-Brown, the visiting speaker, has spent the last twenty years perfecting the craft. He explained the rules of construction for a double-faced rubble-filled stone wall built from a trench dug eight inches into firm ground.