Welcome to HILLTOP GARDENING CLUB
Bussage, Brownshill, Chalford Hill, and Eastcombe
Next Meeting - Tuesday 5th May 7.15pm Eastcombe Village Hall -
Kevin Alviti - 'Our Homestead and how we got here'.
Note the Date - Sunday 10th May - Eastcombe Village Hall 2pm - 4pm:
Plant & Pre-Loved Tool Sale with Tea and Cakes.
Notes from Last Meeting - 7th April, 2026
Harriet Rycroft: ‘A Friendly Greeting - Pots by Your Door’.
What do the pots by your door say about you? The 700 and rising containers commanding attention at Harriet Rycroft’s front-door were vocal in the mixed-messages they signalled. Pots used to welcome, guide, funnel, repel, attract and protect throughout the year were densely stacked high and wide. A former Gardener at Whichford Pottery, doubtless contributed to Harriet’s confidence with planting colossal pots on a daunting scale but even a humble small basket was transformed by considered planting with a right pot in the right place mantra. Fashionable taste in gardening dismissed as nonsense, Harriet gently guided listeners towards repeated colour-schemes, judicious use of rare-plants, grouping, texture, scent and seasonal planting. Harriet was generous towards others insisting ‘your pots are your pots’. Do what you like with them (even if her own have been likened to works of art). She often uses playful props in her pots: children’s toys, fairy-lights, found-objects, granting amnesty to the garden gnome. Her excellent images were testament to considerable horticultural skills and wide-knowledge of plants from exotics to ferns, sedums, bulbs, trees, bedding plants, the over-looked and very familiar all potted up with panache. Harriet’s ‘more is more’ philosophy is soundly rooted in understanding the needs of potted plants which take priority over domestic demands.
The evening culminated in a performance-piece masquerading as practical instructions for planting up a pot and sourcing botanical companions to ensure the plants’ well-being.
Entertainment and education together granted members and visitors permission (if needed) to follow their own tastes and create beautiful, welcoming spaces. Finally, many questions were answered with aplomb and gardening wisdom.
Last Meeting Report
Robert Bryant: The Natural World of Gloucestershire -
3rd March 2026
A familiar figure at HGC, Robert Bryant’s talks are punctuated by riveting images and driven by lived experience of the natural world witnessed in often macroscopic detail through the lens of a digital camera. Such images are testament to dogged patience and photographic skills used to better grasp the complexity of Gloucestershire’s diverse landscape. All the while drawing out the symbiotic relationship between insects, birds, amphibians, butterflies, plants and habitats this comprehensive talk was too detailed to adequately summarise but in brief it was good to see Gloucestershire’s natural richness beyond Cotswold’s hare-bells, Siccaridge Wood’s lily of the valley, Daneway’s butterflies to the limestone of Selsey Common and Rough Banks ‘insects galore’. Habitat friendly sites were also pictured in the acidic soil of the Forest of Dean’s ancient woodlands and iron-ore industrial legacies. The iconic clump of trees acting as a beacon on May Hill is also rich with bird-life and counterintuitively bluebells and so on to the silt of the Severn Estuary and Purton Hulks. Each person present will have their own highlight but the photographs of Bewick and Mute swans at Slimbridge Wet Land Centre and large blue butterflies at Daneway warrant a mention. The latter a reminder of conservation success and the former the necessity of maintaining wetlands for winter visitors. After a whistle-stop tour of glorious Gloucestershire there was just enough time to shoehorn in regional abundance of fascinating fungi and mistletoe. This talk was indeed ‘full of sex’: fecundity and breeding success stories from Oystercatcher’s courtship to Cranes and to insect-worlds in wood-piles. A talk delivered with wry humour while not anthropomorphising wild-life, Robert made playful comparison with human behaviour as well as giving a gentle nudge in the direction of the ecological gardener’s mantra ‘leave litter’. Robert’s talk was a reminder in a fractious world that time spent looking at our natural world’s local habitats, even on our own doorsteps, can provide respite. Take some slow moments with a fast shutter to shut out the noise for a while and ‘stop and look’.
Pam Meecham
Notes from the last few meetings can be found below. (Previous meeting notes can be found on the Archive page)
