Our speaker in April 2022 was local nurseryman Colin Ward. He runs Swines Meadow Nursery in Market Deeping and as usual brought along many unusual plants for us keen gardeners to buy. He has become a woodland plant fanatic and has created more shade so he can further indulge his passion.
In his lecture he showed many images of interesting and beautiful plants and Anemonopsis macrophylla is one that comes with its lilac hanging flowers soon after the snowdrops. It does prefer a moist dappled shade condition. An unusual prehistoric plant Chloranthus fortuneii, has interesting leaves which change colour from deep purple to deep green in the summer and has white scented tassels. Another tempting plant that he also brought along was an herbaceous Clematis fusca coreana BSWJ8413 which has brown hairy flowers and unusual golden seed heads. Colin is also a keen Polygonatum and Aspidistra collector. The latter genus is now known to have 150 species. One plant which flowers in late spring which was known to many was Samuma henryi grows in light shade with bright yellow flowers. He covered so many rare and unusual plants to mention them all here.