The Gardeners’ Gathering at Fibrex Nurseries proved to be the perfect mix – beautiful flowers, specialist talks and plants for sale with the added bonus of cake.
It’s the second year the family-run nursery at Pebworth near Evesham has held the event, brought in when they stopped exhibiting at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show after more than 50 years.
With a village fete atmosphere – think bunting, WI teas and friends catching up on gossip – it was the ideal summer outing, made even better by a break in what had seemed like days of endless rain.
The nursery holds National Collections of both pelargoniums and ivy and these were open for visitors to wander through. Fibrex also has a sizeable collection of ferns, and the British Pteridological Society was just one of the specialist groups represented.
Naturally, given the collection at Fibrex, it was just the place for The Pelargonium and Geranium Society to hold its national competition.
It made for a stunning display of colour with all types of pelargoniums on show from angel to zonal.
I rather liked the markings on this regal variety – ‘Fringed Aztec’.
This is another beauty: a regal called ‘Spanish Angel’.
For something a bit more dramatic the stellar pelargoniums are ideal. This is ‘Win Ellison’, which won a first prize.
I haven’t grown hanging baskets for some years but was rather taken by these. Simple but effective.
Given the riotous colour of the pelargoniums, it was somewhat surprising that the top prize went to a somewhat diminutive geranium.
Possibly the most shocked was Tom Kirkland who entered it. In fact, he described himself as “absolutely stunned”.
Tom’s been growing pelargoniums and geraniums for just five years, having started as a way of “getting out of the house” after heart surgery, and it was only his second year of entering the national contest.
He and Robert Barclay made the five-and-a-half-hour journey from Douglas, South Lanarkshire, for the show.
The geranium, ‘Orkney Cherry’, had spent the past six weeks in a greenhouse, having been lifted from their garden – treatment that obviously paid off.
The other highlight of the day was the chance to pick up some tips from expert growers on subjects as diverse as propagating ferns and how to create a standard ivy tree.
Rosy Hardy, one half of the husband-and-wife team at Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants, gave a fascinating talk on herbaceous perennials.
She started by showing us some new introductions in the world of dianthus and digitalis, passing around pots or, in the case of Digitalis ‘Firebird’, cut flower spikes, so that the audience could get a closer look.
The talk then moved on to plant suggestions for shade and sun, all illustrated with the award-winning nursery’s stock.
Along the way we got the benefit of her years of growing: pulling rather than cutting off spent flowers on tiarella; adding a touch of yellow to ‘lift’ a planting scheme; and thinking of purple foliage as a sun tan that needs topping up by some full sun during the day.
Rosy also suggested burying the plant label under Anemone barbulata, which might be mistaken for a buttercup so you’d know to replant if it was accidentally dug it up.
Rob Evans of Pheasant Acre Plants also gave a talk on how to propagate and care for dahlias, one of the specialities of his award-winning nursery.
He advised using a cuttings mix of 50% compost, 25% perlite and 25% silver sand, and starting tubers off in shallow bowls to get shoots for cuttings.
With Fibrex being forced to pull out of this year’s Hampton Court Flower Show and not at the Malvern Autumn Show, the Gardeners’ Gathering was the nursery’s last event of 2019. It is open to the public though and well worth a visit.
It sounds great – I think events like this are going to get more and more popular, as the large shows get more and more expensive to get into!
I think you’re right. One of the joys of the day was that it was free entry, both to the event and to the talks.