At the first meeting of the horticultural year at Aldersbrook Horticultural Society, we welcomed Ashley Edwards, one of the presenters of Gardeners’ World, who spoke first about his career – as a small child, he loved bedding plants and he was close to his grandmother, who encouraged him to love gardens and nature.

 As a young man, he worked in a local garden centre and then studied at Kew Gardens, where he gained his RHS qualifications and the Kew Diploma.  

This gave him the opportunity, through the Interchange Fellowship, to work at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania – a contrasting horticultural experience to Kew Gardens.

This was followed by an internship in Sicily where he concentrated on growing food for the table.  On his return to the UK, he became Head Gardener at Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham and from there to becoming the Head Gardener at Horatio’s Garden at The London Spinal Cord Injury Centre in the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore. Here he focussed on growing plants for wellbeing and creating beautiful outdoor rooms for seriously injured patients and their visitors. As his broadcasting commitments have increased, Ashley has now taken up the part-time position of Head Gardener at Crocus, which is based at Dorney Court near Windsor.

Ashley showed us how the garden is being revived and replanted – although it has an original walled garden, the growing conditions on the site are challenging, with strong crosswinds and planted with dense hedges and skinny borders.  Ashley shared with us the new planting designs for each part of the garden, with a focus on growing climate-resilient plants, adding shade, structure, sensory planting and a seating area.  The work was only started in February and from the slides it looked as if it had been planted for years!  A rain garden has been developed with plants that can cope with water and drought. Sand and aggregates have been used as a substrate in some of the beds, which improves the growth of drought-resistant planting. There are cutting beds with dahlias and annuals and beds that show examples of Crocus collections.  

Crocus is a well-known online nursery that provides plants for many Chelsea gardens.  The next phase of the project is to look at providing an alternative to a lawn – maybe a wildflower meadow or alternatives to grass such as camomile.  

The garden is open on Mondays & Tuesdays, so we hope to visit next year.

Plant of the Month

A new feature of our monthly meetings is the Plant of the Month competition – we are delighted to announce that there were 14 really good entries and the winners this month were:-

1^st Jan Tallis with a beautiful and unusual Clerodendrum trichotomum var. fargesii, ‘Glorybower’

2^nd Jane Karavasilli – Clematis vitalba

3^rd Barbara White – Hibiscus