We have the Easter holidays this month, time to spend just a little more time in the garden. The flowering cherries and crab apples plus a host of shrubs and bulbs should be filling the landscape with a mass of colour. When flowering has finished, it is time to prune most of the spring-flowering shrubs. [...]

After one of the severest winters for many years gardeners will be hurrying to catch up preparing for the spring. Hopefully the hard frosts will have done good by breaking up the soil which had been dug and will have got rid of some of the bugs which cause problems. Lawns may have suffered and [...]

Chipperfield was blessed throughout the month of December with a feast of Christmas music. Traditionally our Choral Society begins the festivities with their wonderful Christmas concert and this year was no exception. A packed St. Pauls Church on 6 December saw Director of Music, Delia Meehan, conduct the choir of almost 100 voices in a [...]

TOM STUART-SMITHAround 100 local gardeners filled the Parish Room on 30 September to hear a talk by one of Britain’s top garden designers, Tom Stuart-Smith. Living locally at the Barn, Serge Hill, Bedmond, Tom is passionate about herbaceous perennials and their use in medium and large gardens and his talk was well illustrated with views [...]

Winter came a little early this year and some of us gardeners did get caught out. The weight of the snow falling on trees and shrubs during October made branches break and led to some early pruning. It did remind us of what might be to come and that we should make preparations for inclement [...]

Autumn Show Our show was held in the Village Hall on Saturday 20 September. Despite the awful weather this summer, the past week had been warm and sunny which made the flowers and produce look at their best. The hall was filled with the most glorious floral arrangements, wonderful vegetables and flowers. Handicraft, baking, wine [...]

In the days before pot-grown and container-grown plants, November was the month when all shrubs, perennials and roses had to be planted. Happily today we can plant these throughout the year with safety. However, hedging plants such as privet, hornbeam, quickthorn and beech are still sold as bare-root plants and so, too, are raspberry canes, [...]

We are fast approaching the time when the clocks go back and gardening after tea is at an end. October is, however, a very busy time for us gardeners as we should be planting tulips, daffodils, crocus, hyacinths and other spring-flowering bulbs. For rock gardens, tubs and containers there are a host of small-flowering bulbs [...]

What a feast of music, song and dance Chipperfield enjoyed this summer!On 21 June Chipperfield Choral Society gave their concert Summerfest at St. Pauls Church. Director of Music, Delia Meehan, recently returned from examining music candidates in Hong Kong, accompanied the choir on the oboe in John Rutters Psalmfest, which opened the concert. The performance, [...]

Summer has not yet gone and already in the garden we are preparing for next spring. Bulbs such as daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and crocus are on sale in the garden centre together with a huge selection of species suitable for rock gardens, sinks and containers. Most bulbs are spring flowering and can be planted out [...]

We have two wonderful speakers this Autumn: 24 September – Terry Simmonds will be giving a talk about his family and the Simmonds Nursery. A rare chance to learn about some of the history of our village and its people.Tickets £3; CHS members £2.30 October – Tom Stuart-Smith, the renowned garden designer, seven times Gold [...]

Gardeners do spend a lot of time talking about the weather. Last summer we had a lot of rain which made the weeds grow furiously and lawns needed more mowing, slugs and snails were more active and diseases such as Potato Blight were rampant. Should we have hot dry weather, we should be taking steps [...]

Wednesday  24 September: Terry Simmonds will give a talk on the history of his family and the Nursery which his family created. Come and listen to him talking on his experience and expertise on plants and gardens.  Tickets: £3; CHS Members  £2.Friday 30 October: Tom Stuart-Smith is 6 times gold medal winner at Chelsea, winner [...]

There are just 3 months each year which are virtually frost-free and June is the first of these. It is a frantic time of choosing and planting out all those tender bedding plants such as geraniums, fuchsias, petunias, busy lizzie, begonias, dahlias, ageratum and marigolds. Trailing fuchsias and geraniums and Surfinia petunias are ideal subjects [...]

We had a touch of summer in February and winter in April so with any luck spring should be with us in May. Traditionally this is the month when we plant window boxes and containers and towards the end of the month we plant our bedding plants since we rarely get frosts then. Geraniums, petunias, [...]

A rousing performance of Finlandia by Jean Sibelius opened the annual spring concert of Chipperfield Choral Society on 8 March. The venue this year was the Barbirolli Hall at St. Clement Danes School and practically every seat was filled in the vast auditorium.It was a rather special occasion as the event was the 50th concert [...]

Last year the spring was so mild that gardeners were planting geraniums and bedding plants in April and they were lucky that the frosts, which usually come at the beginning of May, did not happen. It is much safer to plant our tender plants later in May and to press on with jobs which should [...]

By the time that the nursery reached its first quarter century, Herbert Simmonds was busy producing new plants. The most successful of these was Cotoneaster hybrida pendula which was exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Autumn Show at Olympia in 1933 and at the Crystal Palace in 1934. This small weeping tree is now grown [...]

Christine and Steve Simmonds-Moore are the proud parents to baby daughter Sienna, born at home in Liverpool on 14 August. Christine and her American husband have just returned from a trip to North Carolina for Sienna’s American grandparents to meet their first grandchild. They returned in time for the Christmastide wedding celebration of Christine’s brother [...]

With Terry SimmondsUntil the 1960s all trees and shrubs, roses and herbaceous perennials were grown in the ground in nurseries and had to be planted in the garden between November and March. Today we are lucky because all these plants are container-grown and we can go along to the garden centre and plant them throughout [...]