Off to a good start for 2025/2026 Gardening Club meetings - Coast to Coast by gardens ... by Car, with Jill and Alun Whitehead

What a wonderful start to the gardening club year. The village hall was warm and welcoming with an air of excitement, the speakers were very entertaining and it was lovely to have new members joining us.

Coast to coast by gardens...by car, with Jill and Alun Whitehead was the first of our visiting speakers' talks. The virtual trip began in Tenby, South Wales in Manobier Castle with its small garden benefitting from the castle walls as its backdrop. We then moved on to Dryffen Fernant, a most inspiring garden and one that I noted as a must visit next time we are in South Wales. Moving east, the next garden was Aberglasney which has a restored Elizabethan Cloister Garden that is the only example of its kind in the UK today. It also has an impressive yew tunnel and a 250 year old woodland with stunning ferns and meconopsis.
​​It became clear at this point in the talk that Jill, in particular, was also interested in the sculptures that can be seen in many of the gardens on this tour. This was evident in our next garden in Abergavenny; The Pant which had an enormous stone turtle and rusted metal fish swimming through lavender

We then hopped over the border into Herefordshire, to Lyndalls Garden near Ross on Wye. This two acre garden was created from bare fields and is now renowned for its displays of over six hundred types of snowdrops. We then visited Bryan Gound before stopping off at Aulden Farm, Jill and Alun’ home and garden with its many sculptures and impressive displays of irises for which they are well known.

​Moving on into Worcestershire, we came to Stone House Cottage Garden, a beautiful, romantic walled garden with numerous brick built follies. It is apparently home to one of the largest collections of rare plants in the country, so another garden for that list of places to visit on a Saturday afternoon! Along the way we stopped off (virtually) at Packwood House, Broughton Grange and Upton House, before reaching Thenford Arboretum, a four acre walled garden owned by Micheal and Ann Hesseltine. This is a stunning garden which surprisingly houses a 7.5 tonne statue of Lenin! Continuing our journey eastwards we visited Rousham, Coton Manor, The Manor at Hemmingford Grey, Chippenham Park Gardens, Fuller’s Mill, East and Ruston, Benton End, before finishing our garden tour at The Beth Chatto Gardens, one of the loveliest gardens in the UK.
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As the talk was coast to coast, our final place was not a garden but Aldeburgh on the east coast which has many fascinating gardens and is a lovely seaside town in which to take in the sea air after an exhausting three hundred and fifty mile tour.

If you wish to join us, our next speaker will be Katie Briggs Thomas who will be telling us how she went from ‘Lady Gardener to Flower Falmer’. The meeting will be held at Stoke St Milborough Village Hall at 2.00pm on 13th November.
If you would like more information about our gardening club, then contact Bev Harris on [email protected] or 07933724728.

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