The programme for the 22/23 winter season has been organised by the HGT events team. This year the talks will be a combination of zoom and live talks at Woolmer Green Village Hall. Tickets must be purchased through Eventbrite, the links are alongside each event. Please see the full listing here.
This is the 25th Anniversary Year of the Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust. They have an extensive programme of events throughout the year at venues across Buckinghamshire which are open to all. Please go to: https://bucksgardenstrust.org.uk/events/
The Links to the news and events of our other adjacent Gardens Trusts (Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, London and Surrey) may be found under “Useful Links” via the “Parks and Gardens” page of the website.
To celebrate our 30th anniversary, HGT have put together two new walks in Hertfordshire. The first tracks the path of the Gadebridge river in Hemel Hempstead, passing through the newly renovated Jellicoe Water Gardens. The second takes in the landmarks of Letchworth Garden City. View them both here.
The Norfolk Gardens Trust is delighted to announce the launch of their latest publication. Enticing Paths, edited by Roger Last, looks at aspects of gardens and gardening in Norfolk over five centuries. It ranges across the whole spectrum of gardens and garden design and history, including the Bishop’s Garden and Carrow Abbey in Norwich, the work of Thomas Jeckyll and George Skipper, lost gardens such as Brundall Gardens and Didlington Hall, aspects of Sandringham and Blickling, the plant collections of Maurice Mason, the Snowdrop breeding of Heyrick Greatorex, Lakes in Norfolk Landscape Parks, Norfolk Gardens as seen in Art, and much more. It is lavishly illustrated with 480 pages and over 500 pictures. Anyone with an interest in Norfolk will enjoy this book, which will also make the perfect Christmas present. Price £30, including free delivery by post. To obtain a copy: please either send a cheque for £30, payable to Norfolk Gardens Trust, along with your address, to R Lloyd, 57 St Leonards Road Norwich NR1 4JW. or email Roger Lloyd at rogerlloydngt@gmail.com giving him your address and confirming that you have paid £30 by BACS NGT bank details: sort code:206253 account number:70659096 reference: EP Your book will be posted to you immediately or, if you are buying it as a gift, we can post it to another address. Please note that there is a special price for NGT members.
It was a chilly and drizzly evening when we met at Benington Lordship for our AGM in early September. Thank you to all who attended. It was an honour and a real pleasure to be elected as your next chairman. There have been two lovely people previously in this role, Bella Stuart-Smith and Roger Gedye, who will be very hard acts to follow. Sadly, I knew Roger for so short a time, but I sincerely hope that together we can build on his legacy. I have a lot to learn and I am looking forward to increasing my knowledge of the Trust and its work and meeting many more members in the future. This year has been very strange for all of us – who knew what holding a meeting via Zoom meant before the summer? For me, and I suspect for you too, our gardens have been our life-line over these past months. As a committee, if circumstances allow, we hope to plan a complete programme of talks, visits and walks for us all to enjoy next year.
We do hope you have stayed well, enjoyed the weather and your gardens and managed to remain positive in these strange times.
HGT would by now have visited our first garden in Essex and been on the first walk to Forty Hall. If you are missing these and a fix of other gardens, we have organised something slightly different and new for our members.
We now have some pages here on the website for photographs of members’ gardens or a favourite Hertfordshire view that you have encountered on a walk. To view our gardens, click on the Parks and Gardens link above. You will then see in the drop-down menu, a link to Members’ Gardens.
If you would like to offer photographs of your garden which you would be happy to share with other members, please send digital images to membership@hertsgardenstrust.org.uk. Please send a maximum of six in the first instance.
Here is a link to the National Gardens Scheme website www.ngs.org.uk where some members have done a virtual tour of their garden in place of opening to the public.
With best wishes,
The Executive Committee