Toby Buckland, English gardener, TV presenter and author, gave an enjoyable and entertaining talk on 8th October 2024. It was full of gentle anecdotes and practical gardening tips. The core of Toby’s talk was colour in the garden focusing on ‘everyday’ more common varieties of plants. He encouraged us to think about texture and leaves, to combine soft and harsher foliage to give the garden a rich tapestry. Plants with dark foliage i.e. sambucus and ricinus make the colour of neighbouring plants stand out.
He told us to experiment with colour; i.e. purple with lime green, and yellow forsythia in the Spring. He spoke in detail about roses and the increased variety of new English roses bred to be disease-resistant and repeat flowering.
Given the changing climate with our wetter summers and much later frosts, Toby suggested looking at perennial prairie planting; i.e. rudbeckias, persicarias, and heleniums, which are more resistant to slugs and other pests and tend to flower later in the season.
He spoke about whether to dig up dahlia and gladioli bulbs or to leave them in the ground over the winter and concluded it was trial and error and depended on the garden conditions, stressing the importance of knowing your garden and matching plants to the conditions.
Among the many tips he gave was to plant tulip bulbs straight from a bucket and not touch the soil with them to prevent squirrels from smelling and then digging them up. Put cut flowers in a bucket in the shed to get rid of insects etc. before bringing them indoors. Bend branches of a rambling rose downwards to encourage more flowers and use everyday annuals to improve soil conditions for a new garden/bed.
Toby then went on to talk about growing edibles. In contrast to the earlier part of his talk, he concentrated on growing more exotic and unusual varieties of vegetables; for instance kale, mucha limes, fig leaf gord, yakon and uncommon varieties of tomatoes.
Tips for the vegetable gardener included picking tomatoes later in the day after a good watering in the morning for more flavour and using banana skins to ripen green tomatoes!
On behalf of the club, Toby was given a warm and heartfelt thanks for his pleasant and lovely talk. There was a consensus that Toby’s gentle and unassuming style together with his love of gardening, had lifted our spirits on a dark autumnal evening.
