User Tools
Sidebar
Table of Contents
News
Future meetings
Spring 2020 meeting
The next meeting of the Southern African Bulb Group will be the Spring meeting on Sunday 29th March 2020, at Hale Institute Village Hall, near Farnham, Surrey, UK, not at Badger Farm Community Centre, Winchester. Doors open at 10:00 a.m. and the meeting will finish at approximately 2:30 p.m. Directions to the Hale Institute Village Hall can be viewed here.
The speaker for the morning session at approximately 11:00 a.m. will be Chris Birchall of Tale Valley Nursery, on the subject of “Rhodohypoxis - Growing, Showing and Natural Environs”. This will cover the plants in cultivation and growing in the Drakensberg, and also some associated plants of the area. In the afternoon, there will be a talk by Jon Evans on “South African bulbs from the AGS Spring shows” and some time for any additional contributions and discussion.
All who are interested in growing these plants will be welcome. There is an entry fee of £3.00, but parking is free. There will as usual be a plant display table, plant sales (a good reason to arrive soon after 10:00!), and tea and coffee with biscuits. There will also be a few books for sale. You are encouraged to bring along any plants you wish to display or sell, or digital photos to share with the audience. Bring your own lunch.
The timetable we plan is as follows:
| 10am | Doors open for Plant Sales. Tea/coffee available |
| 11am – 12.00 | Talk by Chris Birchall: “Rhodohypoxis - Growing, Showing and Natural Environs” |
| 12.00 - 1 pm | Lunch |
| 1pm - 2pm | Talk by Jon Evans: “South African bulbs from the Spring AGS shows” |
| 2pm – 2.30pm | Winding up |
Latest newsletters
- The most recent published newsletter is number 39 (April 2019)
- You can read or download all the SABG newsletters from our list of newsletters
- There may be a draft of the next newsletter: Newsletter no. 41 but it is likely to be incomplete.
News items
- I have moved some pictures and information about our former Chairman Bill Squire to a separate page [Richard White, 1 April 2019]
- “Ephemeral” seeds (which germinate immediately) were available to members for two days only. For the list of species available, see Ephemeral seeds available 20-22 November 2018 [Jon Evans, 20 November 2018]
- In the latest October 2018 Silverhill Seeds newsletter (http://www.silverhillseeds.co.za/newsletter.asp), Ondine Schrick (who had worked for Rod and Rachel Saunders for over twenty years and is now the owner of the business) writes “We hope Rod and Rachel are in a gentler place now – perhaps at the top of a mountain gazing down over unfolding hills and valleys, tranquil. Work done, dreams and adventures fulfilled. The world a richer place for their time spent here.” There are many other tributes in the Scottish Rock Garden Club forum (http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=16118.15) [Richard White, 7 November 2018]
- The cremation service for our former Chairman Bill Squire was scheduled to place in Bangkok yesterday [Richard White, 7 November 2018]
- A display of a small selection of Bill Squire's plants was presented by Leo Squire and Tony Bennett at the meeting of the Dorset Group of the Alpine Garden Society, of which Bill had been Chairman, on the 1st November, 2018. A small but appropriate tribute to a wonderful man. [Richard White, 2 November 2018]
- Sadly I have to report the death of Bill Squire, our long-serving former Chairman, on Friday 26th October 2018. Not long after starting a “new life” with his partner in Thailand, he succumbed to a short but fatal illness. He was also well known as the former Chairman of the Dorset Group of the Alpine Garden Society, and the curator of the National Collection of Lachenalia. I am sure everyone will join with me in expressing our condolences to his family. [Richard White, 29 October 2018]
- I have just added The South African Species of Dipcadi by A. A. Obermeyer (1964) to our Links to other web sites [Richard White, 29 October 2018]
- For many years Audrey Cain maintained a large collection of photographs of bulbs, many of them South African, which could be viewed on her web-site, called “BulbWeb”. This has not been available for a while, but I am pleased to be able to report that, with help from Audrey and her son Doug, I have been able to reinstate the photos (about 1,500 in about 190 genera) and some of Audrey’s comments about them. The comments are mostly about flowering dates in cultivation, and require some more work to sort them out properly. However, rather than keep them hidden until this is done, I have made a provisional version of BulbWeb available on the SABG web site. Any comments will be welcomed by Audrey and me. [Richard White, 10 October 2018]
- There is a special issue of the Pacific Bulb Society’s journal “The Bulb Garden” dedicated to the lives of Rod and Rachel Saunders. [Aiko Talens, 3 October 2018]
Bulb and Seed Exchange 2019
- The annual Bulb & Seed Exchange for 2019 will begin in August. Details will be emailed to members, and repeated in the appropriate Newsletter. The full list of bulbs and seeds will be sent to members, and details will also be available in a simplified form here: Bulb & Seed Exchange 2017. (
Those lists previously available can be seen here: Bulb & Seed Exchange 2015 and Bulb & Seed Exchange 2015.)
About the SABG web site
This is a new version of the SABG web site, which is intended to contain all the information from the original SABG web site (which will remain available for a while, but will not be updated). The URL (location, address) at which the web site can be found has not changed. It is www.sabg.tk or just sabg.tk. It is a secure web-site. If your web browser says it isn’t, go to https://sabg.tk. Information about our compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can be found in our Privacy Policy.
This new version is hosted by a company whose servers are housed in an energy-efficient data centre powered by energy from green renewable sources. It’s implemented as a “wiki” in order to make it easier for people to contribute to it. The page “What's a wiki?” gives more details of how it works. Please email me with any problems or suggestions.
[Copyright © 2020 by the Southern African Bulb Group and Richard White.]
Page Tools
