WELCOME TO LAVENHAM GARDENING CLUB
Lavenham Gardening Club holds monthly meetings at Lavenham Village Hall, Church St, Lavenham CO10 9QT.
We invite a variety of speakers, arrange outings and hold social events throughout our annual programme, as well as a plant sale, a produce show, and a quiz.
We currently have approximately 70 members and new members are always welcome. The annual subscription is £20 which includes entry fee to the monthly meetings and refreshments (excludes celebrity speaker events). Non-members are welcome to attend monthly meetings, with an entry fee of £4.
Celebrity speaker events are open to members and non- members alike, and are ‘ticket only’, bookable in advance.
If you are interested in joining us, please contact Gwyneth Arnott (membership secretary) on 01787 247919.
Lavenham Gardening Club is affiliated to the RHS.
To view our upcoming sales, trips, talks and other events, please go to the Events page.
PLANT SALE
LAVENHAM Gardening Club holds a Plant Sale in May. The Plant Sales are well established events, supported locally and a perfect opportunity to fill your garden at reasonable prices.
The plant sale includes annuals, perennials, shrubs etc. Donations of plants are always welcomed and obviously increase the variety of plants on offer. The plant sales provide the club with a main source of income, so if you have plants to divide or surplus cuttings and seedlings please let us know!
SOCIAL EVENTS
Our main social events are the summer garden party, usually held in August, and the New Year Party, held at the end of January. Both are very enjoyable events, with catering and wine provided. The New Year party, held at the Village Hall, also includes entertainment during the evening.
Our Garden Celebrations Event will be launched in 2025.
Our events calendar is packed with talks, trips, social events and Celebrity speakers.
Future events –
Wednesday 25th February 2026 – AGM – 7:30pm Lavenham Village Hall.
Wednesday 25th March 2026 – Talk by Alan Gray of The Old Vicarage Garden – 7:30pm Lavenham Village Hall.
Further events to be announced in 2026!
It is good to see the garden recovering from the drought. We are having an early autumn but many flowers are blooming again! If you are adding bulbs to your garden, get smaller ones into the ground or pots quickly, as they are more prone to drying out in the packets, eg. iris reticulata, anemone blanda, chionodoxa or species crocus. Soaking bulbs before planting tends to deter squirrels but they still seem to take any crocus that I put in! You can try covering plantings with chicken wire. Plant tulips deeply in pots or borders – layering bulbs that bloom at different times, topped with violas, pansies, bellis and forget-me-nots will give a long lasting display.
Autumn is the best time to move shrubs or plant new ones. The roots have time to establish before winter and they will be more resilient to dry conditions we may have next year. After working in organic matter to enrich the soil, I water the plant and planting hole before planting, and water well after planting, as our clay soil is so dry. It’s also the best time to divide or plant new perennials. There are often bargains to be found where perennials have finished flowering and garden centres want to clear space for new stock. Choose new plants that give you more than one season of interest and support wildlife by providing nectar, berries and habitat.
I keep reading that with our changing climate we can grow plants that would not previously have survived our winters and certainly exotics seem to be increasingly popular. However, I will still be moving tender plants indoors, including agapanthus, ‘hardy’ salvias and dahlias. Insulate well any tropical plants that are too large to move.
Lawns may need an autumn feed to revive them – you can also leave grass cuttings. Spiking will improve drainage in areas that will become wet. Collect fallen leaves for leaf mould – especially useful to top up pots of acid loving plants like camellias, azaleas, and rhododendrons through the year. Leave leaf and log piles and garden cuttings for wildlife.
As you tidy the garden, collect your own seeds but also leave seed heads for birds and hollow stems for insects during the winter. They also look beautiful when they are frosted. Garden tools will need some maintenance at the end of the season – a job for a rainy day?
Plants for Oct & Nov: chrysanthemum, grasses, aster, Japanese anemone, colchicum, cyclamen, acer, hydrangea, nerine, viburnum tinus, sumach, sorbus, parthenocissus
Carolyn Jenkins
We held our annual summer garden party on Wednesday evening 7th August, in the delightful setting of Little Hall gardens Lavenham. Over 50 members joined us for a very sociable evening. A bonus was a dry evening for us all. Please go to the Gallery to see all of our photos, including this event.