Welcome to HILLTOP GARDENING CLUB
Bussage, Brownshill, Chalford Hill, and Eastcombe
Next Meeting - Tuesday 2nd December 1.30pm Eastcombe Scout HQ -
Charlotte Popescu - 'In Praise of Apples' & 'End of Year Celebrations'.
Next Years Gardening Club Holiday to Kent- 14th - 17th June.
There are 4 twin rooms and 2 single rooms still available.
Download all the information HERE
Margie Hoffnung ‘Westonbirt School Gardens-the Holfords and the Creation of the Landscape’
November 4th.
Although Margie Hoffnung has personal and professional connections to Westonbirt (arboretum and school gardens) her engaging talk was more than reminiscence and self-deprecating anecdote. It was firmly anchored in well-illustrated archive material. The Victorian, sepia-coloured photographs, maps, landscape designs, plans, plant-lists and crucial gardeners’ notebooks were used as guides to help members and visitors visualise the evolving historic gardens to their more recent conservation, renovation, and repairs.
A conservation officer for the Gardens Trust, Margie deftly delineated the complexities of ‘The Holfords’ genealogy, across several generations necessary for this historic roundup. In brief the central driver of the plot Robert Stayner Holford, the entrepreneurial Victorian, reputedly the richest man in England through inheritance and marriage wanted a bigger garden: much bigger. Like many of the super-rich of his age he was obsessed with collecting and had the networks and budget to acquire and study plants, especially trees, and old master art works too. Working with fashionable architects he nonetheless stayed with W.S Gilpin’s earlier notion of the ‘picturesque’ landscape and created a relatively informal garden. It was easy to warm to a man who built his garden before starting Westonbirt House (since 1929 Westonbirt School). His ‘Creation of the Landscape’ did involve rehousing Westonbirt villagers into architect Lewis Vulliamy’s new terrace (and, incidentally diverting village brook, and re-routing and closing roads).
However, Holford’s initial plans were largely realised and still visible today: the renovated Italianate-garden beautifully restored. The Holford’s planted for the future. While large trees might be beyond our space, budget and planning rules, Margie’s final compelling image was of an original field of anemone apennina still going strong. Maybe just time to get blue and mauve anemones and watch them naturalise and try some legacy planting on a modest scale. Fascinating talk with time to exchange stories and memories and ask questions.
October 7th meeting
Robert Bryant: Garden Photography
Ostensibly a ‘how to do it’ of garden photography, Robert Bryant (ARPS) guided us through equipment choices to stress-free photo-printing, framing and storage, with prints for members and visitors to peruse post-talk. However, the presentation encompassed more than technical competence, inducting the listener into patient looking, pressing the delete key and enjoying the serendipity of the moment. Photographs of gardens from Highnam Court and Highgrove to Versailles and Villa Carlotta, Lake Como, were pressed into pedagogic service as exemplars of compositional devices such as photographic structure including framing, verticals, depth of field, leading to a point, low view-point and foreground dominance, all strategies enhanced by creative use of light, weather and water.
Following the grand gardens, were subject-rich images to be found on our own patch. Given a gentle nudge towards photographing the familiar yet frequently overlooked insects in our gardens the ‘wonder at creation’ was evident in the startling images. Close-observation of insects through a camera lens may make entomologists of us all as Robert detailed the symbiotic relationships between insect, environment, biodiversity and the gardener. Good to know that the frisky bugs are best photographed very early in the morning in an immobile, sleepy state.
Our droll speaker, with a precise and yet light lecturing touch, showed how to capture the almost surreal architectural quality of plants, using light-boxes, while accepting that ‘taste’ also plays a part in the judgement of quality. Robert Bryant’s image of a robin in full-throttle song was a reminder that the quotidian even hackneyed is worth another look through a lens against received judging wisdom.
Notes from the last few meetings can be found below. (Previous meeting notes can be found on the Archive page)
August 5th 2025 - Finding the Angle at Chelsea
Finding the Angle at Chelsea: a journalist’s view of the world famous flower show’ required an experienced and robust guide. Mandy Bradshaw, Hilltop Gardening Club’s August speaker fitted the bill. An award-winning garden journalist and photographer based in the Cotswolds, Mandy can be found through The Chatty Gardener blog and is known through numerous publications including Gloucestershire Citizen and Echo, ‘The English Garden’ and ‘Cotswold Life’. Being a member of the Professional Garden Photographers’ Association and a journalist doesn’t guarantee automatic right to a press-pass, and subsequent entry to the coveted Chelsea press-day. The surprisingly quixotic, bureaucratic and controlling RHS act as gate-keeper apparently resulting in a competitive scrummage. Mandy was at pains to distance herself from press-day’s glamourous celebrity culture (preferring to work in practical boots and weatherproof Drizabone). The clamour for a front-page, headline-grabbing photo or article seemed at odds with the RHS/Gardeners’ World rhetoric of gardening as a stress-free, close to nature pastime. So, finding an angle at Chelsea is not for an introverted wilting wallflower: being connected and pushy sounded mandatory. Mandy’s angle options were usually narrowed from the national and international to profiling gardens with a broad Cotswold interest. It was good to see so many ‘local’ garden designers, growers and builders put into a Chelsea context. Flowers were also an angle with the Rosa ‘Highgrove’ shoe-horned into the local angle along with local growers in the Flower Marquees.
Mandy’s edited highlights across many visits, were a mixture of anecdote and stunning photographs that went some way to grasping the complexity of the colossus that is Chelsea.
The talk was brisky delivered with too many characters to single out individuals: green-fingered or not. What was evident and well-illustrated was the richness and diversity of gardens, designers, growers and builders in the Cotswolds.
June 3rd - Val Bourne - Peonies and Roses
'Peonies and Roses: a Marriage Made in Heaven’ the title of Val Bourne’s first talk at Hill Top Gardening Club on June 3rd recollected gardening at Spring Cottage in “Cold, Cold Aston” in the Cotswolds. The less than Edenic, wind-swept, derelict site, transformed across twenty-years to a hard-won verdant, vibrant garden was the crucible for ‘trial and error’ planting. An excellent story-teller, Val’s narrative, told with warmth and humour, quickly instilled confidence. We were in safe, expert hands, as she wove two plant histories and practical know-how into a compelling account: even for the sceptical. The history of peony breeding and the intricacy of rose selection were detailed but never dull. A professional garden-writer and plant trial judge with encyclopaedic horticultural knowledge, Val presented us with an almost bewildering array of peonies and roses to grow in inhospitable situations.
At Spring Cottage with succession planting in mind, gone were old-fashioned bare rose-beds, replaced by a dense patchwork of peonies and roses with recommended, diverse companions. Integrated sustained colour, texture and perfume informed the biodiversity that crucially sustains Val’s eco-friendly garden and organic commitment. Intimate, up-close working knowledge of a challenging site without recourse to pesticides and chemicals has sifted the wheat from the chaff to plants able to cope without cosseting. Val’s exuberant images of Spring Cottage are witness to the eclecticism and joie de vivre of a self-confessed plantaholic. Her most recent, timely publication, is ‘Tough Plants: Garden gladiators that pack a punch in extreme weather.’
Judging by the huge number of members’ questions, cheerfully and expertly answered with down to earth help and numerous plant suggestions, Val Bourne’s talk was engaging and practically helpful. As promised, she sent plant recommendations and reading which are on HGC web-site. Time to think about planning next year’s programme: members have already requested another Val Bourne talk.
Clare Savage ‘Digging a Career in Horticulture’.
Listening to someone’s horticultural working-life can be illuminating: the more so if the telling is delivered with passion and self-deprecating humour. A magical moment of epiphany in the seemingly barren deserts of Australia transformed by rain ‘into an explosion of growth’ led a young Clare Savage to wonder how such extraordinary botanical transformations happened. Such botanical curiosity needed answers. An autobiographic approach provided a compelling structure as that pivotal antipodean experience shaped a vivid and varied professional career. This horticultural life was marked by study, voluntary work at Chelsea Physic Garden, serendipity, and good-luck. Looking at old photographs of Clare with gardening legends such as Beth Chatto, the role of good mentors was also evident. So too was her adaptability and willingness to travel and gain new-skills. From entry -level runner she helped bring to our TV screens a number of gardening programmes: later sourcing plants to fact-checking for presenters and keeping production running smoothly: even necessitating dog-sitting the late lamented Nigel! Behind the scene glimpses of the technical, time-consuming complexity of producing programmes such as Gardeners’ World and Chelsea, revealed horticultural crossovers. From filming time-lapse seedlings, to mapping Spruce distribution against policy changes in Wales to visiting cocoa growers in Grenada, Clare outlined many diverse career possibilities. While film production was fascinating, the lure of hands-on gardening also beckoned and Clare enjoys work as a maintenance gardener. Many members asked questions: approaches to slug control, wild-life, working without pesticides and insecticides, weeding, film to product ratio, to garden design and how to inspire and encourage children to become gardeners? Clare’s advice: start with the gift of a watering can. Who knows which road might be taken from watching the profound effects of water on plants?
Pam Meecham
