NEWS
David Kohn has won the BOC photo competition for a second year! The winning photo is included in the gallery on the right.
The date for our ‘Garden Party’ is 20-Jul-25.
Our Chair, Bill Gardiner, again asked for volunteers to help with our Spring Show on Saturday (29-Mar) and for contributions to the catering and to the tombola. He also asked for the names of plants that members planned to bring so that he could prepare standardised labels.
Phil Broom won the Novices table with his Cymbidium Lucence The Globe Bell Pinkie – I’m not sure about the name, but that was what was on its label. David Kohn won the Winner’s Table with his Laelia jongheana.
SPEAKER
Our guest for the meeting was Andrew Brogan, the creator and proprietor of the Henstead Exotic Garden. In a wide-ranging and varied talk, he described how he realised his ambition to create an exotic garden on a site two miles from the Suffolk coast, starting twenty years ago from scratch. The climate there is definitely not tropical – the wind from the East can be bitterly cold in winter – and so the permanent planting uses about 100 fully hardy palms, which self seed, as a framework. Apart from the nursery polytunnels, nothing is protected in winter or watered. Rock was brought in from Chesterfield for hard landscaping. Buildings on-site are made from locally sourced wood. The garden has been enlarged several times with land purchases from the adjacent estate. Other plants used include giant bamboo, which is highly invasive and can grow 40 feet (12 metres) in a month. Various magazines have featured the garden, and it was included in Alan Titchmarsh’s ‘Britain’s Best Gardens’. It is hired as a location for TV shows and modelling shoots. They exhibit at the Suffolk Show, so we can look out for them there on 28-29 May.
A Suffolk Orchid Society visit to the Henstead Exotic Garden is planned for Saturday 13-Sep-25.
