The Magazine includes a wide variety of articles by members, book reviews, Group news, garden visits, letters and cottage garden recipes.
The Magazine editor is Jill Bennett (jill.bennett@waitrose.com)

These are the articles appearing in our current Magazine...

Click here for our magazine archive

My dictionary of quotations does not give a source for this but I suspect that the phrase "Nurturing a viper to my bosom" came into my vocabulary from Shakespeare via P G Wodehouse. In the garden context I use it to mean having lovingly reared a plant which is not what I thought it was. In a long gardening career I seem to have met rather a lot of these. I can still remember my first viper. A packet of primrose seed from a commercial company, which yielded only a single seedling. This was cherished and potted on lovingly until it grew up into a foxglove. I now know that many primulas are very reluctant to come from anything other than very fresh seed, but I was young and innocent then (well, fairly innocent) and was sadly disappointed.

Since those far off days, my weed-seedling recognition has improved. I never grow on hairy bittercress for example, and am even quite good at distinguishing carrot and parsnip seedlings from the huge range of other less-desirable umbellifers which always pop up in the vegetable plot a day or two before the wanted ones germinate. (My personal definition of a companion plant is one with seedlings nearly identical to what you have just sown.)

More annoying vipers are those which take longer to reveal their identity. I grew what claimed to be a self fertile kiwi fruit for nearly 10 years before admitting to myself that instead of bearing both male and female flowers it bore neither. 

Another culprit was a Pyracantha rogersiana 'Flava' bought from a reputable nursery to form part of a particular plant grouping. After 3 years it bore small orange fruits. We took a branch back (the whole plant was rather big by then) and the nice man said "Oh yes, one of that batch" and replaced it. Three years later the replacement also produced orange berries. This time the rather dim girl said "Oh, is it supposed to be yellow then?" and had to be pushed to replace it. By this time the rest of the group was rather big for the small replacement, so I planted it somewhere else. Three years on it did indeed produce small, sick-looking yellow fruits, in pathetic numbers. Last year I bought a different, yellow-fruited Pyracantha from somewhere else. This time I bought it in full magnificent berry but I'll have to find a new site for it. The original two, moved to odd corners outside the garden proper as 'fillers', have grown into monsters 15‑20 ft. tall, with pathetic flowering and fruiting. They are scheduled for chain saw pruning this year!

The worst vipers of all have been fruit trees, all from reputable specialist nurseries. Fruit trees are a big investment in time and money. At least one of our apples, one plum and one grapevine have borne little resemblance to the varieties on the label, and another apple is clearly on the wrong rootstock. Two sweet cherries from the same source, bought as a pollinating pair, flower at the same time every year, with huge numbers of wild cherries blooming and cropping within easy bee flight. Neither has yielded a single fruit in about 18 years. We don't really want to grub out half our orchard and there seems to be no comeback on these. Do suppliers rely on frequent house-moves and gardener inertia to cover their careless labelling? The worst offending nursery sends me mouth-watering catalogues of their fruit trees several times a year - but I no longer buy from them.

The final vipers are the ones I don't really mind. Some of the seed in the seed exchange has poor viability or is clearly mis-labelled, but it is always fun to try, it is free, and sometimes real treasures emerge - so I have to have another go every year. I do try to make sure that what I send in myself is correct, but some plants are distinctly promiscuous so ordinary gardeners with open-pollinated flowers are never really sure what they are producing. I just hope that we have some sun this summer to ripen and dry off the seed, as so much rotted in the pod last year ‑ but please not a major drought either.

September
Cottage Gardener's Diary. Sue Phillips
We Live and Learn. Pat Collison
Seed Exchange 2003
The Tale of a Novice Seed Collector. Diane Quick
The Tale of a Novice Seed Sower. Mavis Brown
A Cottage Garden in Washington DC. L J. Ockerstrom
New Garden for the Herb Society. Clive Lane
Perfume from Provence
An Autumn Sunshine Gardens Cruise. Elizabeth Pratt
Kniphofia galpinii. Jane Baker
A Visit to the National Wildflower Centre. Lyn Goodkin
Endangered Wildlife
Gardening for Children
Plant Prejudices
Pond Gardening. Ann Fordham
On a Cottage Windowsill - Haemanthus. Gail Harland
Special Christmas Package
Life at Pleasant Cottage - Goosey, Gander? Jo Amey
Apple Festival Celebrations

2000

March
AGM and Garden Party - 25th June
Seed Guardians. Dina Penrose
Creating a Garden Pond. Judy Cameron-Rollo
Recommended Pond Plants - and Some to Avoid! Pat Collison
Major Shows in 2000. Dina Penrose
Up the GM Garden Path- Pam Lewis
Millennium Day Flowers. Alison Thompson
CGS Millennium Raffle
On a Cottage Windowsill. Gail Harland
National Garden Visits 2000.
BBC 'Gardener of the Year' Competition. Shirley Gilbert
The Climbing Cobaea. Pat Mansey
Summoned by Bells! Paula Beever
CGS Notelets
Lupin-land. Sarah Conibear
Highlights of My Gardening Year. Erica Nevitt. Jane Baker
On Seeing the First Cuckoo. Natalie Finch
Campanulas - and Canines. Anne Fordham
Speakers on Gardening Topics.