Gotherington Village Website

Gardening Club Backup

Contacts
Chairman:  Kirsty Buxcey  01242 675175
Secretary:  Cathy Thompson 01242 676708

After a year with no meetings or our usual parties, trips and plant sales, the club held its February meeting via Zoom. After a short AGM, we had a very interesting talk on the National Garden Scheme and the NGS gardens in Gloucestershire by Vanessa Berridge, an award winning writer and an NGS area co-ordinator who lives in Winchcombe. 

The NGS plans to open 72 gardens in Gloucestershire, 31 of which will welcome dogs on leads. Until Easter visits have to be prebooked and this may continue, depending on the social distancing rules. The NGS has a good website with lots of information, including virtual tours of gardens filmed last year. The website is: https://ngs.org.uk/

After a series of very interesting on-line meetings and talks, on a range of topics, the club is restarting face to face meetings.  Our September meeting is being held in the greenhouse at Gotherington Nurseries, which Mark and Liz have kindly offered for our first one. Reg Moule, who broadcasts on Radio Hereford and Worcester, is talking to us about current  gardening issues. We are then hoping to return to the village hall in October. 

We have arranged the following 2 talks:

  • October 20 – Classic, Rare and Unusual bulbs – Gill Hazell
  • November 17 – Of Mead and Flowers, an appreciation of Medieval and Monastic gardens – Nathalie Mignotte

Instead of our usual plant sale at the June village coffee morning, on June 5 we set up a stall on the playing field and sold a range of plants which members had donated. We had a warm and dry afternoon and made over £150 which will help pay for our Zoom speakers, as we have suspended club subscriptions until we can meet properly.

Our June garden party could also not go ahead as usual. Instead we arranged a garden trail, allowing members to meet each other in the open air and more limited groups.  9 members in Gotherington welcomed us into their gardens on a very sunny and hot afternoon and everyone enjoyed meeting friends and discovering what interesting and beautiful back gardens people have.  Very few members managed to visit all 9 gardens and we realised how long a village Gotherington is!  A selection of photos from the gardens can be seen here.

In September, 30 club members visited the garden at  Ampney Brook House, in Ampney Crucis, which opens by arrangement for the National Garden Scheme. On a very hot and sunny afternoon, members enjoyed meeting friends again in a pretty Cotswold garden and sitting in the shade with a very welcome cup of tea and cake. A selection of photos can be seen here.

Visitors are always very welcome to our meetings either on-line or in the village hall and we would be very pleased if you would like to join our club.

Please get in touch with our secretary, Cathy Thompson (gary.cathy.thompson@btinternet.com) if you would like to join one of these Zoom meetings, have any questions or would like to know more about the club.

Prompted by the virtual tours that are available on gardening websites, such as RHS and NGS, members’ photos of their gardens in Spring 2020 can be viewed here:   Members’ Gardens.    We have also produced a newsletter containing some interesting articles contributed by some of our members.  Members should have received a copy of  this but it can be viewed or downloaded here: GC Newsletter June 2020


Gotherington Gardening Club was formed in October 1962. Initially known as the ‘Gotherington and District Horticultural Society’ it held monthly meetings, Spring and Summer shows with cups awarded as well as social events and garden visits. The name was later changed to ‘Gotherington Gardening Club’ as it was felt this was more in keeping with local garden lovers.

The Club meets on the 3rd Wednesday of each month except August in the Village Hall at 7:30pm. We enjoy a wide range of speakers and demonstrations, not always on specialist gardening subjects. We are interested in all aspects of the natural world and our impact on it, so we have invited speakers from the RSPB, environment agencies, bug hunters etc as well as gardeners, growers and travellers. We still arrange trips to gardens and other related destinations.

New members and visitors are always welcome.

In addition to our regular meetings we normally have one or two outings.  In June 2020 we were to have visited Winterbourne House and Gardens, an Edwardian Arts and Crafts suburban villa and botanic gardens owned by the University of  Birmingham in Edgbaston, south Birmingham.  We are planning to rearrange this trip for June 2022.

In June 2019 we visited Hampton Court Castle in Herefordshire.  Some pictures from the day can be seen here. 

The Club had a stall at the Village Fete on 27th July 2019, with a colourful display of planted pots loaned by members, which can be seen here. We held a small plant sale which raised £50 for the Gotherington War Memorial restoration fund.

Some pictures of our 2018 outings can be found here Bowood House and Gardens and here Croome Walled Garden.