2022 marks 25 years of Milford on Sea Gardeners’ Club.
The club was the brainchild of two keen gardening friends, Jan England and Jenny Spenser. They weren’t sure how it would be received in the village but thought it was a good idea so plans and discussions took place through the summer of 1996 and a small committee was formed. The launch took place in January 1997 at a Gardeners’ Question time.
The panel consisted of Peter Chappell, who owned “Spinners” at Boldre, Tom Mackinley who was a show judge and Nick Aldridge from Braxton Garden Herbs. The venue was the Church Hall.
Would it be a success? Would people come? Well, the queue stretched all around the building and it took 30 minutes to get everyone seated in the hall! By February the club had a membership of 155 and a waiting list was started. Since then, right up to the present year the club has had a membership of at least 120 every year so I think we can say it was a great idea.
We have been actively involved in various local projects over the years. In 1999, to mark the upcoming millennium, the club started a project to plant up the Centenary Copse by the bridge, so called because it had been owned by the Parish Council for 100 years. Club members cleared it and it was planted with a mix of primroses, snowdrops, foxgloves and other plants and shrubs beneficial to wildlife such as hellebores and pulmonarias. We managed it for 20 years and continued to add to the planting but in 2020 handed it back to the Parish Council as we no longer had enough volunteers to maintain it. Plus, it was 20 years down the line and the keen 50-somethings had become creakier 70-somethings!
Jenny also designed and planted the Community Centre Garden in 2010 with plants provided from Club funds. In 2020 we donated £500 to the Community Centre in their lockdown appeal and managed to get it match-funded so they benefited from £1000.
We have always supported charities as a by-product of our activities, although this is not our main aim, and through Open Gardens and Plant Fairs over the years have raised in excess of £40,000.
We were the first organisation in the local area to hold Open Gardens, the first being in 1998 for club members only. In 1999, seven gardens were open for the princely sum of £2! From 2000 onwards this became a biennial event, alternating with Sway, but we were the first, something we are rather proud of! After much discussion following the 2016 Open Gardens, when the Committee worked their socks off, we decided to have a break. Lack of volunteers subsequently meant that we decided we could no longer hold this event.
We have been on some amazing holidays over the years, organised and researched by Jenny Spenser who has found us some fabulous private gardens to visit, many of which have been featured on TV in Gardeners’ World.
We went to Paris, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the club, visiting Monet’s garden at Giverney, as well as several others and we had a boat trip down the Seine.
We had a holiday in Scotland by air. We were supposed to fly from Southampton direct to Inverness but ended up going via Belfast and back via Manchester! Coming home we spotted Joanna Lumley sweeping through the airport with her entourage! We visited wonderful gardens and castles in Scotland including Glamis Castle, belonging to the Queen Mother, where we could see Orkney just across the water. You can’t get much further north on the mainland!
We have had some well known speakers. Tom Hart-Dyke, who was kidnapped and held captive for nearly a year on a plant hunting trip to Central America, spoke at a meeting run jointly with New Milton and Lymington Gardeners’ Clubs. We shared his fee which was £1500! Whilst he was held captive he planned his 'World Garden' in Kent; his talk, needless to say, was fascinating.
We ran another joint talk with Chris Beardshaw as the speaker. He was involved in creating a garden for Chelsea using the people who work at Furzey Gardens, which was one of our charities for that year. The talk was held in Milford Parish Church. It was packed out and he certainly gave value for money. He was supposed to talk for a hour to 90 minutes but was still going after 2 hours! People were getting uncomfortable on the hard pews and in the end Jenny had to politely stop him as we had overrun our allotted time! He came back from Chelsea with a gold medal and the garden was installed on the Furzey Gardens site. I still remember his best bit of advice: “If you are not sure whether to keep a plant or get rid of it, imagine you have a paradise garden and the plant will be with you for eternity. If you don’t want it forever, dig it up.” Sound advice for decision making!
We have had Helen Yemm who writes a column in the Saturday Telegraph and at almost the last meeting before lockdown we had David Domoney of TV’s 'Love your garden' fame. He also appears on several other TV programmes. David came to us thanks to Jenny Spenser who 'won' him in a draw at Chelsea flower show! The prize was to have her garden redesigned by him. Alas! Too late! Jenny, being a garden designer herself, had just completed a new garden as she had recently moved so she negotiated him coming to give a talk to the Club instead; we could never have afforded him otherwise!
The irony was that Jenny had a holiday on the other side of the world booked for the only date he could come so she never got to see him. It was a hugely informative talk where he shared loads of tips and amusing anecdotes about people he had worked with on TV.
Looking back over the past 25 years we have come a long way since that first Gardeners’ question time and have gone from strength to strength. So I have a big thank you to say to Jenny and Jan for their brilliant idea.
What does the future hold for the club? In August we will be holding a celebratory tea party for our 25 years, at the Community Centre. We have asked the Parish Council if we can plant an oak tree in the Community Meadow to mark our anniversary and the Queen’s Jubilee and they have agreed. Jenny is planning a holiday for 2023 which will include a visit to Bridgewater, the latest RHS garden near Manchester. We are planning a great programme of speakers as always. It’s looking good BUT our success is due entirely to a hard-working committee, all of whom are getting older! Like many local organisations we need some new, younger people to step up and take the baton if we are to continue successfully into the future.
Sue Crabb
Chair of Milford Gardeners’ Club
The club was the brainchild of two keen gardening friends, Jan England and Jenny Spenser. They weren’t sure how it would be received in the village but thought it was a good idea so plans and discussions took place through the summer of 1996 and a small committee was formed. The launch took place in January 1997 at a Gardeners’ Question time.
The panel consisted of Peter Chappell, who owned “Spinners” at Boldre, Tom Mackinley who was a show judge and Nick Aldridge from Braxton Garden Herbs. The venue was the Church Hall.
Would it be a success? Would people come? Well, the queue stretched all around the building and it took 30 minutes to get everyone seated in the hall! By February the club had a membership of 155 and a waiting list was started. Since then, right up to the present year the club has had a membership of at least 120 every year so I think we can say it was a great idea.
We have been actively involved in various local projects over the years. In 1999, to mark the upcoming millennium, the club started a project to plant up the Centenary Copse by the bridge, so called because it had been owned by the Parish Council for 100 years. Club members cleared it and it was planted with a mix of primroses, snowdrops, foxgloves and other plants and shrubs beneficial to wildlife such as hellebores and pulmonarias. We managed it for 20 years and continued to add to the planting but in 2020 handed it back to the Parish Council as we no longer had enough volunteers to maintain it. Plus, it was 20 years down the line and the keen 50-somethings had become creakier 70-somethings!
Jenny also designed and planted the Community Centre Garden in 2010 with plants provided from Club funds. In 2020 we donated £500 to the Community Centre in their lockdown appeal and managed to get it match-funded so they benefited from £1000.
We have always supported charities as a by-product of our activities, although this is not our main aim, and through Open Gardens and Plant Fairs over the years have raised in excess of £40,000.
We were the first organisation in the local area to hold Open Gardens, the first being in 1998 for club members only. In 1999, seven gardens were open for the princely sum of £2! From 2000 onwards this became a biennial event, alternating with Sway, but we were the first, something we are rather proud of! After much discussion following the 2016 Open Gardens, when the Committee worked their socks off, we decided to have a break. Lack of volunteers subsequently meant that we decided we could no longer hold this event.
We have been on some amazing holidays over the years, organised and researched by Jenny Spenser who has found us some fabulous private gardens to visit, many of which have been featured on TV in Gardeners’ World.
We went to Paris, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the club, visiting Monet’s garden at Giverney, as well as several others and we had a boat trip down the Seine.
We had a holiday in Scotland by air. We were supposed to fly from Southampton direct to Inverness but ended up going via Belfast and back via Manchester! Coming home we spotted Joanna Lumley sweeping through the airport with her entourage! We visited wonderful gardens and castles in Scotland including Glamis Castle, belonging to the Queen Mother, where we could see Orkney just across the water. You can’t get much further north on the mainland!
We have had some well known speakers. Tom Hart-Dyke, who was kidnapped and held captive for nearly a year on a plant hunting trip to Central America, spoke at a meeting run jointly with New Milton and Lymington Gardeners’ Clubs. We shared his fee which was £1500! Whilst he was held captive he planned his 'World Garden' in Kent; his talk, needless to say, was fascinating.
We ran another joint talk with Chris Beardshaw as the speaker. He was involved in creating a garden for Chelsea using the people who work at Furzey Gardens, which was one of our charities for that year. The talk was held in Milford Parish Church. It was packed out and he certainly gave value for money. He was supposed to talk for a hour to 90 minutes but was still going after 2 hours! People were getting uncomfortable on the hard pews and in the end Jenny had to politely stop him as we had overrun our allotted time! He came back from Chelsea with a gold medal and the garden was installed on the Furzey Gardens site. I still remember his best bit of advice: “If you are not sure whether to keep a plant or get rid of it, imagine you have a paradise garden and the plant will be with you for eternity. If you don’t want it forever, dig it up.” Sound advice for decision making!
We have had Helen Yemm who writes a column in the Saturday Telegraph and at almost the last meeting before lockdown we had David Domoney of TV’s 'Love your garden' fame. He also appears on several other TV programmes. David came to us thanks to Jenny Spenser who 'won' him in a draw at Chelsea flower show! The prize was to have her garden redesigned by him. Alas! Too late! Jenny, being a garden designer herself, had just completed a new garden as she had recently moved so she negotiated him coming to give a talk to the Club instead; we could never have afforded him otherwise!
The irony was that Jenny had a holiday on the other side of the world booked for the only date he could come so she never got to see him. It was a hugely informative talk where he shared loads of tips and amusing anecdotes about people he had worked with on TV.
Looking back over the past 25 years we have come a long way since that first Gardeners’ question time and have gone from strength to strength. So I have a big thank you to say to Jenny and Jan for their brilliant idea.
What does the future hold for the club? In August we will be holding a celebratory tea party for our 25 years, at the Community Centre. We have asked the Parish Council if we can plant an oak tree in the Community Meadow to mark our anniversary and the Queen’s Jubilee and they have agreed. Jenny is planning a holiday for 2023 which will include a visit to Bridgewater, the latest RHS garden near Manchester. We are planning a great programme of speakers as always. It’s looking good BUT our success is due entirely to a hard-working committee, all of whom are getting older! Like many local organisations we need some new, younger people to step up and take the baton if we are to continue successfully into the future.
Sue Crabb
Chair of Milford Gardeners’ Club