Saturday 12th September, 2pm – St Peter’s Baptist Church, Eden Close, Worcester.

Julia Mitchell will be joining us to talk about caring for and cultivating penstemon.

Julia runs a nursery near Upton selling a wide range of cottage garden plants, as well as some shrubs, alpines and herbs. They supply quality plants, and also recommend varieties that they think will thrive in your garden.

Julia is a Penstemon specialist, and in recent years she has built up an impressive collection of unusual and interesting penstemon varieties. The nursery has done exhibits at RHS Shows for many years – and they have been awarded several RHS Gold Medals, including a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2021.

The talk is free for HPS members. The charge for visitors is £5.00. Refreshments are available, as well as our regular plant sale.

Come and hear Diane Clement share her experiences discovering plants on a trip to Japan.

Diane has been visiting the Alps for over 40 years, and has specialised in growing alpine plants for over 20 years.  She is a keen exhibitor and judge for the Alpine Garden Society.  She has a wide range of plant interests, in particular hepaticas, cyclamen, bulbous plants and woodland plants which she grows in cold frames and in her shady garden in Wolverhampton. 

Diane believes it’s really important to understand where our garden plants originally hailed from – to help us to give them what they need and to become better growers.

The meeting starts at 2pm on Saturday – St Peter’s Baptist Church, Eden Close, Worcester. Free for members, visitors £5.00.

Thank you to everyone who came along to our plant sale at the weekend. It was really well-attended – and we know lots of you went home with some real bargains.

We signed up a few new members too. If you are interested in joining the Hardy Plant Society Worcestershire group – please send an email to hpsworcs@gmail.com and we will get in touch.

Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook too.

Our annual plant sale takes place this coming Saturday. Starting at 2pm. You’ll be able to get some superb plants at very reasonable prices. Admission is FREE. It’s always very popular. We look forward to seeing you there!

‘FIRST-RATE PERENNIALS’ – Val Bourne – President of the HPS

Val Bourne is well-known as an author and gardening writer featuring in The Daily Telegraph, The English Garden and Country Life, amongst others.

She recently took over from Roy Lancaster as the President of the Hardy Plant Society. Val has been an HPS member since the 1970’s, freely admitting it was initially for the free seeds but with the added benefit of making many friends along the way.

One of the secrets of gardening successfully is choosing the best plants and Val’s talk will give you some great tips on finding the right shrubs and flowers for your garden.

Please be aware that the RHS Spring Festival is taking place at Malvern 7th-10th May. So if you are planning to visit the show – make sure you go on the Thursday, Friday or Sunday so you don’t miss hearing from our President!

Our next meeting takes place on Sarturday 11th April. Garden Organic is a charity based at Ryton in Warwickshire which promotes organic growing and composting. They also encourage citizen science and research, and seed conservation through their Heritage Seed Library. If you want to find out how to garden ‘the organic way’, using natural methods to promote healthy, productive, sustainable gardens – make sure you don’t miss this talk!

‘AN ARMCHAIR WALK THROUGH THE GARDENS OF BLENHEIM’ – Andrew Mills

Having worked for most of his horticultural career caring for heritage gardens, Andy joined Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire as the Head Gardener in 2022. Blenheim Palace has 90 acres of formal gardens that are embedded with history, much like the palace itself. Parts of these gardens have been buried for centuries, and Andy has been working to bring these features back to life.  He will be telling us about the work that has already taken place, and his plans for the future.

The meeting starts at 2pm. Members get in free – visitors £5.00. And a reminder that we will be having our Annual General Meeting after the talk.

‘Views and Vistas – a fresh perspective on Garden Design’ – Carol Smith

Join us this Valentine’s Day to hear local garden designer, lecturer and author Carol Smith. Carol has run her own garden design business for the past 22 years. She has designed medal winning show gardens at Chelsea, BBC Gardeners World Show and Malvern Spring Garden Show.

In 2009 ‘The Tree of Life Garden’ designed by Carol was re-built at St Richard’s hospice, to be used by staff, patients and their relatives. And in 2010 she worked with St Peter’s Garden Centre and BBC Hereford & Worcester to design a showcase garden for the ‘Love Lives On’ appeal for the Noahs’ Ark Trust. Whilst lecturing at Pershore College, Carol was commissioned to write a book on her specialist subject: Planting Design. Her latest book, Gardening On A Gradient was published in 2022.

Saturday’s meeting starts at 2pm. Members of the Worcestershire HPS Group attend for free, and it’s £5.00 for visitors. Refreshments and home-made cakes are available. What an opportunity for a romantic date!

January is when most of our members renew their subscriptions. Membership of the Worcestershire Group is conditional on being a member of the national Hardy Plant Society. The annual membership fee of the Worcestershire Group for 2026 is £35 to cover the cost of a twice yearly newsletter and the monthly meetings at St Peter’s. A joint membership for the year for the local group is £50.

Our Members Secretary will be at this Saturday’s meeting to process payments or help set up a Bank Transfer (BACS) or a Standing Order.

For further info please contact hpsworcs@gmail.com

Our latest Newsletter is now available to view and download. Simply go to the Newsletters page of the website, and click on Download. And don’t forget we always welcome articles and photos from our members – so if you’d like to write something for the next newsletter, please get in touch with the Editor Mike Bentley editor.hpsworcs@gmail.com