'The Hardy Plants society' Passionate about Plants' with guest speakers Andy Sturgeon, Fergus Garrett and Val Bourne.

This is going to be a long, long blog !! sorry

I have just discovered this Society,  I really wanted to find a gardening community.  Gardening and Garden Design can be a solitary business.  I went to a ' Passionate about Plants' day held by the Middlesex group.  With three amazing speakers with different takes on gardening. We started with Val Bourne who talked about gardening and her home with such humour and love,  I wanted to move into her gorgeous looking home and garden in her garden.  Val was a teacher, you can tell, she talks with passion and also didn't hesitate in telling me that the problem with many garden designer is they don't know their plants,   I quickly mentioned before studying garden design I had been gardening for nearly 10 years,  but lets be honest, after listening to her speak, I know nearly nothing. This is a gardener with it in her bones, Val started as a child.  As she said when all her friends were at the local disco she was tucked up in bed with seed catalogues. You see, I was at the Disco, that's where it all went wrong!!  

Next up we had the amazing Fergus Garrett, he is the gentle keeper of Great Dixter,  he worked with the late great Christopher Lloyd.  Fergus talked about the garden with love and affection and always bought Christopher's gardening ethos back into his talk ' Christopher always wanted the plants to look comfortable where they were planted '. He showed us photos of how he and Christopher played with colour combinations in the garden,  fabulous photos of Mr Lloyd wearing a bright coloured shirt with an equally bright coloured backdrop of the plants.

Last we had Andy Sturgeon who talked openly and honestly about the sometimes pure fluke moments of garden design where something that wasn't planned happens and falls into place in a Chelsea RHS show garden.  He had the audience laughing all the way through,  what a relief to find someone who is so successful in the fickle world of design with such a great sense of humour and there is hope for us Garden Designers who are just starting out.

The whole day was finished off with a hall next door filled with nursery owners and there plants.  The more mature audience of this day were hardcore shoppers these are gardeners not to be messed with, think first day of Harrods sale.  They REALLY know their plants.  I found myself buying Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer - just because Val said she loved them and a Crambe cordifolia - just because a lady standing next to me of the amazing age of 89 said she loved them and called the Crambe ' lady of the woods with her arms outstretched and Allium scenscens Twisty, just because..... sign up .... they have a full calender and often garden visits that you might not get there on your own.  This whole day cost me the paltry sum of £20 and of course the bags of plants I bought. The society are now on facebook. A great day out.