Joanna Dyson

Events in May

Village Coffee Morning May 9th 10 – 12 in St Mary’s Church.

Open to everyone and offers of help with either supplying a cake or tray bake or with setting up and serving on the day gratefully received.

Speaker Evening May 12th 7pm St Mary’s Church

Our speaker this month is Katherine Woods aka ‘The Tea Break Gardener’.

Katherine will be speaking on Planting in Shadier Places.

Katherine is a lecturer in gardening and garden history, her gardening blog The Teabreak Gardener contains weekly diaries, plant profiles and how-to-guides. Her experience comes from her own garden and her Web site is worth a read. The line that resonated with me is “I love my garden warts, weeds and all.”

Hopefully the recent dose of sunshine has sparked your enthusiasm for the Great Outdoors, including all things gardening. These speaker events are open to all for just £5 on the door or Free if you are a Gardening club member. Membership is available at just £15 for the year and includes all members of your household. We look forward to seeing many of you there.

Don’t forget that members enjoy 10% discount on garden plants from Burford Garden Centre, 10% off all products in the garden dept at Timms in Brize Norton (great for gardening tools, compost and seeds) and 10% off plants, bulbs and seeds at Cassington Nurseries.

Please check out the updated Calendar of Events on our web page. In particular please note the change of dates and venue for the Garden Club visit in June. Please let us know either by email or at the May events, if you would like to join us for that June garden visit.

April Events

Saturday 11th April Village Coffee Morning 10am – 12pm
This month we will have a small selection of plants and garden pots for sale.  It’s an ideal time for planting so do come and join us.  ALL welcome.

Tuesday 14th April 7.00 – 8.30pm Gardening Club Speaker and card sale
Mandy Bradshaw, aka The Chatty Gardener will present her Guide to Cotswold Gardens in a talk entitled ‘Beyond the Garden Gate’. The talk is free to Gardening Club Members or £5 on the door for non members incl light refreshments.

Mandy Bradshaw is an award winning, Cotswold based garden journalist, photographer and public speaker. She is a regular contributor to national publications including Homes & Interiors, Garden News and to Cotswold Life.  A member of the Professional Garden Photographers Association, so we can expect some colourful slides, she will also have some cards with her featuring her pictures and these will be available for cash sale so please bring cash if you can.

In March we enjoyed a lively and engaging talk from horticultural expert Ray Broughton.  As well as giving us lots of suggestions for herbaceous perennials suitable for our gardens he also gave us some useful tips.  One such tip was to use tomato sauce to clean garden shears, coat the blades and leave for 2-3 days then rinse off. A couple of us have tried it and can confirm it works!!

Don’t forget that members enjoy 10% discount on garden plants from Burford Garden Centre, 10% off all products in the garden dept at Timms in Brize Norton (great for gardening tools, compost and seeds) and 10% off plants, bulbs and seeds at Cassington Nurseries.  Just take your membership card along. What better way to take advantage of Ray’s planting suggestions!

The updated calendar of events

Nothing heralds spring better than the cheerful sight of daffodils coming into bloom in our gardens and along the verges.  As our gardens spring back into life so too does the Village Gardening Club. Our coffee mornings and speaker programme both start again in March.  We have some interesting speakers lined up to come so please do join us.  Talks are free to members (£15 per household/year) or £5 on the night including refreshments.

Tuesday 17^th March Talk 7 – 8.30pm St Mary’s Church

Planning Herbaceous Borders a talk by Ray Broughton

Ray trained at RHS Wisley and has been teaching and speaking on a wide range of horticultural subjects for over two decades. Awarded a fellowship by the Chartered Institute of Horticulture for his service to horticulture, Ray was a Senior Lecturer at Sparsholt College. Talks are Free to members or £5 on the night including refreshments.

Our first village coffee morning will be on Saturday 14^th March from 10 – 12 in St Mary’s Church.

Our village coffee mornings will continue through to the summer, usually on the second Saturday of each month.  They are for all to come along to and enjoy a hot drink and a piece of cake whilst meeting and catching up with others from our village and the local area. Run by the Gardening Club with the support of both the BBVA and St Mary’s, we are dependant on a small number of volunteers to run them so appreciate all offers of help with setting up, serving refreshments or providing cakes and biscuits.  It’s a great way to meet others in the village!

GARDENING CLUB EVENTS MARCH – MAY

As a member of the Black Bourton Gardening Club don’t forget you enjoy 10% discount at some of our local gardening centres, just take your membership cards along and show them at the checkout before you pay.:

• Bampton Garden Centre (full priced plants only),
• Timms Garden Department, Brize Norton (all products in the department)
• Cassington Garden Centre (plants only).

We also now have 20% discount for purchases from Thompson & Morgan, email blackbourtongardeningclub@gmail.com for further information.

If you would like to join our WhatsApp group where members are starting to share requests for cuttings and seedlings and offers of pots please email us or send text or WhatsApp message to 07720805265′

The Snowdrops are out – Spring is on its way!

It’s always so heartening when you start to see snowdrops peaking through the undergrowth whilst out on a walk. With that in mind if you’d like to take a stroll amongst the snowdrops to lift your spirits here are some stunning locations around our area.

• Waterperry Gardens (near Wheatley): Famous for its Snowdrop Weekend in February, showcasing over 60 varieties and a riverside walk.
• Welford Park (near Newbury): Known as one of the best in the UK, with 5 acres of beech woods filled with snowdrops, open Wed-Sun, Jan 28 to March 1, 2026.
• Kingston Bagpuize House (near Abingdon): A private estate opening in February with stunning, snowdrop-filled woodlands. Opening Days: Every Sunday and Wednesday in February (1st, 4th, 8th, 11th, 15th, 18th, 22nd, 25th).
• St Botolph’s Church (Swyncombe, near Henley-on-Thames RG9 6EA): Offers a peaceful, charming, and free, scenic walk, often with “snowdrop teas” available.
• Basildon Park (National Trust, near Goring): Features lovely, accessible woodland trails blanketed in white.
• Thenford Gardens and Arboretum (near Banbury): Boasts over 600 species of snowdrops, creating a spectacular, diverse display.
• Evenley Wood Garden (near Banbury): Boasts over 80 named snowdrop varieties in a woodland setting.
• Badbury Hill (National Trust, near Faringdon): Known for bluebells later but offers nice early-season snowdrop walks.
• Colesbourne Park (near Cheltenham): Renowned for over 350 varieties, with open days every weekend from late January to February 23, 2026.
• Newark Park (Gloucestershire Ozleworth, Wotton-under-Edge GL12 7PZ): A National Trust property featuring snowdrop-filled woodlands.
• Boddington Manor (The Manor Boddington Cheltenham Gloucestershire GL51 0TJ): Features an annual snowdrop trail in the woods. Sunday 9 February 2025, 2:00 pm to 4:30 pm. £5 admission, cash only.
• Painswick Rococo Gardens (near Stroud GL6 6^TH). Open daily from Saturday 17 January to Sunday 1^st March 2026. While there are only 15 named varieties, the garden is famous for its massive, naturalised display of over 5 million individual snowdrops.

Also, the days are starting to get a little bit longer, this is especially noticeable if we’ve had a sunny day (although they seem few and far between at the moment!). So, on days when it is sunny, it’s a chance to wrap up warm and get out in the garden. Here’s the link to the RHS website on jobs in the garden in February.

Continuing the snowdrop theme, I subscribe to the newsletter from Bunkers Hill Plant Nursery, and this week received an offer of a FREE pot of snowdrops and an opportunity to collect the new Bunkers Bonkers Bonus Card. All I have to do is to guess how many of them there are at Painswick Rococo Gardens…the answer is in the list above…so I may have a go!!! They do have regular offers but you have to subscribe to the newsletter https://bunkershillgardenshop.co.uk/

For those of you who haven’t ventured over to Bunkers Hill, it’s a bit of a trek but worth it as they often have different plant varieties than the garden centre chains. Bunkers Hill, Kidlington OX5 3BA.

For those of you who prefer a bit of armchair gardening during January, why not take a peek at Monty Don’s Rhineland Gardens, his new gardening series on the BBC. He travels from the Alps to the North Sea on the River Rhine as it flows through big cities, dramatic landscapes and romantic valleys. Along the way Monty explores extraordinary gardens shaped by the mighty River Rhine. Well worth a watch. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002px5m/monty-dons-rhineland-gardens

Just a reminder that as a member of the Black Bourton Gardening Club you can enjoy 10% discount at some of our local gardening centres, just take your membership cards along and show them at the checkout before you pay.:

• Bampton Garden Centre (full priced plants only),
• Timms Garden Department, Brize Norton (all products in the department)
• Cassington Garden Centre (plants only).

We also now have 20% discount for purchases from Thompson & Morgan. This includes seeds, plants, bulbs, onion and potato sets and more. Products which they refer to as ‘non live’ i.e. garden pots and tools etc are not included.  To benefit from our discount you can either order from their website HERE, or by post. If ordering online you will need to set yourself up when you order so that they have your address etc and can link the discount to it. When setting up and placing an order make sure you quote our unique order code which is TM_GT748P this will ensure you get the discount. If you would prefer to order by post we have some copies of their seed catalogue for 2026 and paper order forms, please just let us know and we will get them to you.

Thank you for your continued support, we look forward to seeing you all in March when we kick off the year with a coffee morning on March 14^th and we have a talk on planning herbaceous borders on March 17th, please see below for our programme through to the summer.

Best wishes from your committee – Ellie, Jo, Niki and Rachel

Thank you to all those who joined us for our October coffee morning and helped to make it such a pleasant and friendly gathering. Our next Village Coffee Morning is on Saturday 8th November from 10 – 12 in St Mary’s and all are welcome.  As this will be our last one this year we look forward to seeing as many of you as possible.  As well as our usual refreshments we may even be offering an early mince pie!

At our October Gardening Club meeting we were joined by Paul Green, a Gloucestershire nurseryman, Paul brought a wide range of plants, many quite unusual, and gave an engaging and enthusiastic talk about how to add colour and interest to your garden in the Autumn. Many of us took advantage of the opportunity to buy some of his stock for our own gardens.

Our Speaker Event in November will be Tuesday 18th November at 7pm in St Mary’s. Attendance at our talks is usually less than 20 people, please do come and join us, although the nights are a bit chilly and dark you will find a warm reception and hopefully enjoy an interesting evening.

The talk is free to Gardening Club Members, £5 to non members, unless signing up on the night!  This will be our last talk this year so do try and join us.

For any queries regarding the above events or membership please email: blackbourtongardeningclub@gmail.com

We thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the Village Fete again this year and are very grateful to the BBVA for inviting us to to have a stall to help generate funds for the Gardening Club. Huge thanks to everyone who supported us, whether by donating items to sell, helping with the set up on the day or coming along to buy from us.  We had a very successful day and were pleased to increase our takings on last year! Here we are just before the start of the fete!

We held our first AGM on Tuesday 23rd September and celebrated our first anniversary with a hot supper enabled by making use of the oven facilities in St Mary’s Hub with home cooked food provided by members. The food and refreshments were well received and the Committee have all been reelected for another year. Membership fees will remain at £15 per household for the year and are due in October.

Our next Village Coffee Morning is on Saturday 11th October from 10 – 12 in St Mary’s this is an informal relaxed event, an ideal opportunity to meet other local residents and even join or renew your membership of the Gardening Club.  Do pop in. Donations of cakes and bakes and help with serving always welcome too.

Our first Speaker of the Autumn on Tuesday 21st October at 7pm in St Mary’s will be Paul Green of Greens Leaves Nursery in Gloucestershire, who specialise in rare and unusual plants suitable for growing in the UK. Paul will talk about plants for the Autumn season, he is very knowledgeable about grasses but will also cover foliage plants and evergreens.  He will bring a selection of plants from the nursery to sell so do join us and bring cash, cards or phones to make the most of this great opportunity to get something a little more unusual for your garden. The talk is free to Gardening Club Members, £5 to non members, unless signing up on the night!  We are very keen to swell our numbers so ALL ARE VERY WELCOME!!

We hope you have all enjoyed the summer and your gardens have not suffered too much long term damage from the lack of rain.

The Gardening Club Committee are busy preparing for the Village Fete on 7th September and would welcome further donations of plants, decorative pots, planters and gardening equipment as well as any good to eat garden produce.  Many thanks to those of you who have offered to help us on the day, we still have space for more of you whether helping to set up the stall or sell the wares we would be very grateful for your help and are sure it will be an enjoyable occasion!

After our summer break and the fete we are looking forward to the resumption of our Coffee mornings on the 2nd Saturday of each month. The next is on Saturday 13th September from 10 – 12 in St Mary’s.  This is also the Ride and Stride weekend so we may have some additional visitors.  If you can help with serving refreshments or making a cake please let us know.

PLEASE NOTE A CHANGE TO OUR PUBLISHED PROGRAMME
(Please note this is a week later than previously advised) 

• Celebrating the 1^st Anniversary of the Black Bourton Gardening Club
• AGM, Supper and Quiz – Tuesday 23^rd September 2025 (7.00-8.30pm)
• Please join us for a fun social evening including Hot Fork Supper and a glass of wine.
• Free to members – non members also very welcome

To help us with planning the catering, can you please email us to confirm your place.

We will also be collecting names at the Village Fete and Coffee morning or you can email us directly.  It is only to get an indication so no commitment is required and all will be welcome on the night, members and non members alike. We will also be gathering feedback on the first year of the Gardening Club via a questionnaire which we will also be circulating to our mailing list and have available at the fete and coffee morning. We plan to discuss the feedback at the AGM.

For any of the above please email us at blackbourtongardeningclub@gmail.com or contact one of the committee.