Our Gardening Group met in the afternoon on Wednesday 28 August 2024 with a view to finding jobs to be done in September, and how best to go about them.

There were many jobs listed including sewing hardy annuals, lifting gladioli corms, collecting ripened seeds, and planting up containers for the winter. September is also the month for dividing achilleas (commonly known as yarrow).

We then moved on to the management of garden pests at this time of year. There was much talk about slugs, snails, vine weevils and the inevitable infestations of box. We also had an update on the box plants at the Bushey Rose Garden where the rose bushes are surrounded with box hedges.

We finished with a more cheerful look at the different types of hydrangea, featuring their flowering habits as well as their variation in colour. It was a chance to recall the amazing hydrangeas at Portmerion, shown below and learn about how to prune them to get such flowers.

We closed with an exchange of seeds harvested from our gardens, and a report on the major works being undertaken to the glasshouses at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.