Bridport Gardening Club

Author: Chris Senior

Visit to Cotehele, Cornwall in July 2026

News, Outing Reports

The dark green of trees and hedges contrast the pale dun of burnt land as July’s heat sets in. Rambling Cornish Cotehele, a Tudor manor house with cobbled courtyards and slabs of granite under slate, where volunteers care for 14 acres of garden and 12 acres of orchards.  Besides a medieval stew pond and dovecote, providing fish and fowl, there is a water mill and quay.  This bustled with vessels in 19th century, local industries having boomed on the banks of[…]

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Bridport Tree Planting August 2026 Newsletter

News

Let’s help double tree cover Who would have thought that the trees we planted in early Spring, which were deep in half a metre of floods by March, would now need watering? But that’s what’s happened. We have had to call out the Town Council bowser, for which big thanks, seven times so far to water our thirsty saplings. The climate emergency – wet winters and droughts in summer – is the main reason we are in business planting hundreds[…]

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Hampshire in May 2026 (Exbury Gardens)

News, Outing Reports

The weather and rhododendrons are ahead of 2025 by a couple of weeks, significant at Exbury, which has 200 acres of mixed herbaceous, contemporary, formal and woodland gardens bordering the Beaulieu River.  There is narrow-gauge steam railway finalised in 2001 by enthusiast Leopold de Rothschild and inspired by Aviemore Station in Scotland. The Rothschild dynasty started with a coin dealer in the Frankfurt ghetto with five sons, who spread throughout Europe in the 1800’s. Exbury House, a neoclassical mansion was[…]

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Bridport Tree Planting May 2026 Newsletter

News

We at Bridport Tree Planting, which has existed now since November 2019, are still sometimes asked who we are and how we work. We thought we’d put up a couple of weather proof notices near where we’ve planted and anyone interested can go the website in the link below where they’ll find a full background plus all ournewsletters since we began. Here is what the notices will look like. And don’t forget, we’ll continue to offer three free native species[…]

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2026/27 Membership Cards

News

A gentle reminder – your current membership card expires on 30th April 2026. Can members who pay their subscriptions via a recurring BACS Standing Order mandate, please check that renewal is set up for April 1st, 2026. This also applies to members who joined on or after October 1st, 2025, and set up a BACS Standing Order. BACS Standing Order is the preferred option for paying your membership, keeping costs low. Forms are available on the club’s website. This allows[…]

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Visit to The Bishop’s Palace, Wells in September 2025

News, Outing Reports

A place of legend where the old and very young find somewhere that speaks to them through ancient walls, colour and design, foliage, or water flowing through the decades: to be glimpsed as a memory at a later age. From the Dean’s Eye, across Cathedral Green then over a draw-bridged moat, we hear of a garden prior to Bishop Jocelyn’s palace and camery, (medieval garden) created early in the 13th century. Later that century the chapel and one of the[…]

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