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SABG
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Important message to all SABG members
With regret, the SABG committee has decided to cancel our autumn meeting arranged for 11th October 2020. We are sorry for the disappointment this will cause, and we look forward to returning to more normal activities when it is safe to do so.
Best wishes,
The SABG Committee
- The SABG meetings in 2020 have been cancelled:
- Sunday 29th March at Hale Institute Village Hall1), near Farnham, Surrey, UK (not the usual Winchester meeting place). Chris Birchall had been scheduled to talk on “Rhodohypoxis - Growing, Showing and Natural Environs”.
- Sunday 11th October. James Hitchmough was to have given two talks.
- SABG Members: do we have your correct email address? Newsletter no. 42 was sent on 31st August to all SABG members whose email addresses we have. If you are a member and didn’t receive it, please email Richard White (see “Contacts” on this page).
- The latest seed list from Bert Zaalberg at www.massonia.com has just arrived. Contact Bert directly if you want to order anything or join his email list. [8 September 2020]
- Have a look at Audrey Cain's BulbWeb, now hosted by the SABG, which contains over 1,400 photographs of plants in 175 genera (not all of them South African). [6 September 2020]
- The annual Bulb & Seed Exchange for 2020 has been completed. Bulbs and seeds have been posted out by its coordinator, Jon Evans. [5 September 2020]
- Newsletter no. 42 (August 2020) is now available. [31 August 2020]
- The SABG Committee has decided it is necessary to cancel the SABG meeting on Sunday 11th October 2020. [31 August 2020]
- An episode of the BBC Gardeners’ World TV series with a portion devoted to wild Gladiolus with Rod & Rachel Saunders, filmed in the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa just before their deaths, has been shown on BBC television in the UK, and is now available for streaming from BBC iPlayer (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000hr3l/gardeners-world-2020-episode-7), but unfortunately only for viewers in the UK, as far as I know. [7 May 2020]
Autumn 2020 meeting (CANCELLED)
Our next meeting on Sunday 11th October 2020 has been cancelled. Recent meetings have been at our usual meeting place, Badger Farm Community Centre, Winchester, and the following information is given in the hope that we will be able to resume meeting in 2021.
All who are interested in growing these plants will be welcome. Doors open at 10:00 a.m. and the meeting will finish at approximately 2:30 p.m. 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 James Hitchmough |
| 12.00 - 1 pm | Lunch |
| 1pm - 2pm | Talk by James Hitchmough |
| 2pm – 2.30pm | Winding up |
More details of our meetings, including directions for getting there, are given on the meetings page.
Other meetings
- This year, the Nerine visit day organised by the Nerine and Amaryllid Society at the Five Arrows Gallery, Exbury Gardens, Exbury, Southampton SO45 1AX, by kind invitation of Nicholas de Rothschild and Theo Herselman, is ONLY open for NAAS members. For these events, see the NAAS events page, and please inform Theo or the NAAS Secretary Alison Corley alison.corley@btinternet.com if you wish to attend.
- Hopefully the Lachenalia Visit Day at Exbury in Spring 2021 will take place.
- We hope to be able to organise SABG meetings in 2021. More details will follow later when they are available.
Further information
- More information about our meetings, the location and directions are shown on our About our meetings.
- More information about the Group
- We have a Google Calendar, so you can add our events to your phone or other device.
- A list of our Past, present and future meetings
- Links to other web sites including suppliers of bulbs and seeds
- We have started a Digital library
Latest newsletters
- The latest newsletter is number 42 (August 2020). You can read or download all the SABG newsletters from our list of Newsletters.
Photo gallery
I plan to include a photo gallery here. Until it is ready, why not visit Audrey Cain's BulbWeb? Her web-site, now hosted by the SABG, contains over 1,400 photographs of plants in 175 genera (not all of them are South African).
About the Group
The SABG is based in the UK and is for anyone interested in growing the beautiful and diverse bulbous plants of South Africa and neighbouring countries. You do not need to be an expert (I’m not!) or live in the UK, but our meetings have all been in England so far.
The objective of the Southern African Bulb Group is to further the understanding of the cultivation of Southern African bulbs, where ‘bulbs’ is used in the broad sense to encompass bulb-, corm- and tuber- possessing Southern African plants, which are mostly ‘monocots’ (plants with strap-like leaves and flower parts in threes or sixes) but also including ‘dicots’ (with broad leaves and frequently five-petalled flowers) such as Oxalis.
Our activities include two meetings per year with talks and plant sales (recently these have been in Winchester in southern England), an annual bulb and seed exchange, and a newsletter with three or four issues per year.
Many of these plants come from the former Cape Province of South Africa, now the Northern, Western and Eastern Cape Provinces, and are easy to grow in a cool greenhouse or a sunny conservatory or window sill. They usually provide colourful flowers in autumn and winter and need a dry period in summer, because they are mostly winter growers from the winter rainfall areas of South Africa. Some are summer growers and a few of these will grow outside in southern or sheltered parts of the UK, such as Agapanthus, some Nerines and Tulbaghias, etc. Others, like Lachenalia, are real jewels to brighten up your conservatory when not much else is in flower.
For help with finding your way around, click on Help (on the sidebar, which may appear on the left of the page on computers and at the top on small devices).
Contacts
- To join the group, or to enquire about joining, email Rodney Sims rodney.sims@tiscali.co.uk. See How to join the SABG.
- To enquire about the newsletter or web site, to send suggestions for additions and improvements, or to submit items for inclusion, email Richard White richard@sabg.tk.
[Copyright © 2020 by the Southern African Bulb Group and Richard White.]
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