Forthcoming events

Wild flowers in northern Greece – 14 to 21 May
Seven-day visit led by George Sfikas to look for interesting wild plants in the Zagoria region of the Pindos mountains and near Meteora. Waiting list places only but please let Heather know if you would like to go another time if this visit was repeated.

Chelsea Flower Show – Tuesday 20 to Saturday 24 May
The UK branch of the MGS is participating in a stand in the educational zone of the Chelsea Flower show. The UK Climate Impacts Programme has invited us to contribute to their presence at the show with volunteers and gardening experience.

South of France – 22 to 29 April 2009
The visit to France last September was such a success that there will be a spring programme of visits to some of the same gardens and some different ones in and near Menton from Wednesday 22 to Tuesday 28 April 2009. Please let Heather know if you are interested.

Oxford Gardens
Plans will be in progress shortly for a programme of visits to gardens in and near Oxford.

Regional meetings around the UK?
If any UK branch member would be willing to host a meeting, perhaps to show members something relevant to Mediterranean gardening in their own garden or in their locality, please get in touch with Heather who would be happy to publicise a meeting and discuss ways in which the branch could provide support.

Past Activities

April 2008 - National Botanic Garden of Wales and a private garden
The group went to the new hot glasshouse at the Botanic Garden and had an excellent guided tour. There was much on how different plants are programmed to cope in different ways with adverse conditions like fires. An interesting and inspiring private garden on a wonderful site with views and a fascinating walled garden captivated those in the group who continued further west. Striking thick slate slabs, a double rill, and interesting edgings set off a wonderful collection of plants including surprisingly tender ones to be surviving in the depths of Pembrokeshire.

September 2007 - Visit based in Menton
At the end of September a group of 25 of us arrived to spend six nights in Menton and visit very varied gardens. We spent three days at coastal gardens between Ventimiglia in Italy and St Jean Cap Ferrat in France, and two days inland. Five of the gardens we visited were state-owned and nine were private. The smallest was 1,500 m2  while some covered several hectares. A report of the visit written by Charles Boot will appear in the April issue of The Mediterranean Garden. Photos can be seen by clicking here. These are the property of Alisdair Aird and may not be reproduced without his permission.

Jardin des Fleurs de Poterie

Pools at Serre de la Madone

View from Villa Piacenza-Boccanegra

La Mortola

Mediterranean Festival at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
We made two visits to Kew’s Mediterranean Festival and to the nursery and compost areas behind the scenes during the summer. We were very lucky on both occasions to be shown round by Rossana Porta, who works at Kew, as she is enormously knowledgeable and answered all our questions at just the right level for whoever was putting them. These were two very special and lively days. On each occasion we had additional guides for part of the time whose affection for Kew was evident and added to the atmosphere of the days. One of these guides was Pat Smallcombe, a retired Kew gardener who had done most of the planting of the garden’s Mediterranean area as well as being a member of some Kew plant-finding trips in the Mediterranean.

Visit to Sicily
A Phoenician island, a Marsala wine trader’s villa and garden, botanical and private gardens, a Greek temple, museums and wild flower hillsides all combined to produce a memorable visit to Sicily from 20th to 25th April 2007 for 25 members.

Biella and Lake Maggiore - May 2006
Biella in northern Italy is almost completely devoid of tourists and has some magnificent old villas built when the region was becoming rich from textile production. It is in the foothills of the Alps and not far from Lake Maggiore. The UK branch visited the area from 12 to 17 May.

Piacenza Park

The private garden of the Piacenzas

To see more photos of our visit to Biella click here.

Gardens in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall - April 2006
Branch members enjoyed a whirlwind visit to eight spectacular gardens in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall from 22 to 25 April 2006. Each garden contained at least a Mediterranean element though we were venturing into one of the wettest corners of the British Isles. Several also provided food for thought for Mediterranean plantings by giving us an opportunity to see a host of exotica from Chile, China and New Zealand.

We met first at Joan Loraine's wonderful woodland garden at Greencombe in West Porlock. Rhododendrons, magnolias and camellias provided a spectacular backdrop for her national collection of erythroniums. Greencombe has been an organic garden for the 40 years that Miss Loraine has been caring for it, using 30 tons per year of lovingly home-grown compost and leaf mould.

Sunday morning saw us at Dr John Marston's Gorwell House, overlooking Barnstaple Bay. Its five acres contain a remarkable collection of plants from South America, South Africa and New Zealand, many packed closely together but balanced by the classical formal vistas, and an eclectic range of follies, from a metal-framed Turkish tent to two temples.

Next stop was the RHS's Rosemoor, where Diana Goodacre gave us an excellent tour of the immaculate 40-acre garden at Great Torrington. The formality of the model gardens and the old kitchen gardens was beautifully offset by the carpets of Fritillaria meleagris in the meadow garden areas. In other parts of the garden F. verticillata, F. imperialis and F. uva-vulpis were in flower.

The following day we were shown around Tregrehan near St Austell by the owner, Tom Hudson. Possibly the least Mediterranean of the gardens we visited, it more than made up for this by the sheer jaw-dropping scale of many of the rhododendrons, camellias, and native and Antipodean trees on display.

Next on our programme Shirley Walker, senior horticulturist at the Eden Project, gave us a guided tour of the warm temperate biome. It was fascinating to see mature olive trees and authentic garrigue in England and to learn something of how they have overcome the difficulties of raising Mediterranean plants with high humidity and low light levels. The South African desert wild flowers and the proteas also provided some exciting planting ideas, as did the experimental work which the Eden Project is undertaking in hydroponic cultivation.

Three gardens in one day is arguably something of a stretch, so on our final day we saw just two - Lamorran in St Mawes and Trewithen near Truro. Each was outstanding. Mark Brent, gardener in charge at Lamorran, gave an expert and entertaining tour of this beautiful garden with its strong Côte d'Azur flavour.

Our finale was at Trewithen. Its head gardener, Gary Long, showed us around the gardens where we saw the many Asiatic magnolias in full bloom and a particularly magnificent Rhododendron macabeanum. Trewithen boasts some 24 champion trees and shrubs (those which are the tallest or have the largest bole at 5 feet from ground level in the UK), though Gary was a little disappointed not to have had 25, as the inspector had failed to identify himself and had therefore missed one specimen. Dick Martin.

Erythroniums at Greencombe.

Clianthus puniceus.

Dancing maenads mirror twisting vines
at the Eden Project.

Erysium mutabile.

Photographs by Dick Martin

September 2005 visits
Wonderful weather and a good turnout for our visits to gardens in Cambridge and Essex in early September made the two days a great success. We had guided tours of parts of the Cambridge Botanic Garden and of the most beautiful parts of the gardens of Trinity College. The following day we went to RHS Hyde Hall, which we explored on our own after an introductory talk from the curator. We continued to the Beth Chatto Gardens at Elmstead Market, near Colchester, where Mrs Chatto was very generous with her time and gave us a wonderful personal perspective on the garden in a half-hour talk. Heather Martin.

Heather Martin - UK Branch Head I must have been invited to be branch head in the summer of 2005 for my administrative rather than my gardening skills. It makes sense as the UK branch is the second biggest branch in the society, we organise visits all over the place and we have many excellent members on whom I can call for gardening and plant expertise. I started working life as a sub-editor and news reporter but in the last 15 years have been running a company which provides management services to professional associations with non-executive directors who don't really want to bother with day-to-day administration. My husband Dick and I have a rather wild rabbit-infested garden in Kent and share a garden in the Peloponnese with my brother and sister-in-law, Alisdair Aird and Helena Wiesner.

Heather Martin. (Picture taken by Sarah Massey.