The planned speaker for December’s AHS meeting was unable to come through illness so instead there was a very successful and well received members evening. As it was the Christmas meeting home-made mince pies – made by Janet Hayes – and mulled wine was served to all members with many glasses being ‘topped up’ during the evening. Ruth Martin gave a talk on 12 favourite Christmas plants – talking about the three outdoor plants, Holly, Ivy and Mistletoe. She also spoke about some typical indoor Christmas plants like Poinsettia, Amaryllis & Christmas Cactus. Photos from the AHS photoshare Whats App group were used to illustrate Christmas Cactus and Cyclamen. Members joined in to give additional advice and information about each plant. 

Following that talk, Sonya Batra gave a demonstration on how to make a Festive floral arrangement using natural evergreen foliage with some added silver and lovely candles to make it suitable for putting on a mantlepiece or side table. Several members have said how they were inspired to go home and make a similar decoration. To finish the evening Jenny Tosh provided a specially prepared Christmas Quiz with questions on Plants and Christmas. This was won by Siobhan Brown. Jenny generously provided prizes for the winners of the Quiz. As well as prizes for the Quiz there were also prizes for the best Christmas jumpers, which were judged by Judith McCann. The best jumper prize winners were Jan Tallis, Alison Tetlow and Janet Daniel. 

Festive Greetings to all our members and friends.

As a retirement gift to herself, Jenny Tosh, our November speaker, bought herself a new Victorian garden path and redesigned and planted a new front garden.  How she carried that out was the topic of our November AHS meeting – a really interesting talk with beautiful slides – by one of our AHS members and a keen gardener, Jenny regularly opens her garden on the Lakehouse Estate.  She began by describing her love of plants with this saying:-

‘Money can’t buy happiness but it can buy a lot of plants.’ 

As Jenny explained she welcomed the opportunity to design a garden using a blank canvas and explained that, as gardeners, we rarely have that opportunity. She began by asking the questions why what and how.  She decided that her front garden needed re-designing as it included some large trees which obscured views into and out of the garden.  The existing original path was broken in places and needed repairing.  She enlisted friends who are keen gardeners including a garden designer, to help her decide which plants to use and employed the London Front Garden Company to provide the hard landscaping.  New planting beds were created surrounded by York Stone and the colour schemes of the planting were purples, blues and white as well as a lot of shades of green.  She also planted grasses to give some movement to the planting.  Jenny was clear that she wanted planting for year-round interest and slides of the garden as it is now showed some lovely colourful planting.

Jenny also spoke about the challenges of the new garden – showing slides of the snow -covered front garden just after it had been created and explained that during that cold spell she lost some plants.  She talked about which plants worked well and which were disappointing and how some of her favourite plants were susceptible to slug and snail visitors.  All of these ‘drawbacks’ are familiar to all of us gardeners and it was refreshing to hear that other gardeners also have challenges.  Jenny gave us a list of plants and told us where she bought her plants which was really useful – for anyone wanting to redesign or create a new patch of garden or front garden this was a really helpful talk.  Questions and comments at the end of the talk focussed on the importance of front gardens to make the area more beautiful, to encourage more wildlife and to prevent flooding. 

Lynne Moore from Moore & Moore Plants, near Billericay, spoke to another packed meeting of Aldersbrook Horticultural Society on Tuesday 14 October.   Moore and Moore is a specialist nursery which specialises in selling shade tolerant and woodland plants.  They have won five golds at the Chelsea Flower Show for their wonderful displays and are aiming for their sixth in 2026.  Lynne started her talk by stating that growing plants in the shade is not just about growing hostas and ferns but there are many other plants that will grow and flourish in shade and she took us through a number of plants that will grow in shade each month.  She talked about the ‘pretties’ – plants that have lovely colourful flowers which can grow in shade as well as emphasising the beauty and attractiveness of different colour foliage which will thrive in shade.

At the meeting Lynne showed slides of plants that will grow in each month of the year – too many to list in one article so below I have set out some examples of the plants for shade that she talked about that will bloom during the year.  She showed pictures of grasses that will thrive in shade like the Japanese Hakonechloa, Calamogrostis and Carex Everest and Autumn flowering perennials like Liriope, Japanese Anemone and Actaea simplex.  Spring flowering plants like Hellebores, Snowdrops and Pulmonaria will brighten up your garden in February and March, as well as Euphorbia and Erythroniums.  For late Spring, Lynne recommended Polemonium, Geum nonna and Geranium Phaeum.  During the early summer months Trollius, Penstemon, Astilbe and Silene should all bloom in partial shade, followed later by Thalictrum, Astranthia, and Aruncus.  

Please note that some of the above plants require damp soil and it’s best to check on the RHS website to see their growing conditions and how much shade they can tolerate. After the talk members were able to buy plants provided by Moore and Moore nursery – what a treat to have such good quality plants available to buy!!

We hope to organise a trip to the Nursery in March 2026.

Lynne very kindly gives us two documents she referred to in her presentation. To view these documents, click on the links below.

Plants for shady places

52 weeks in the shade