Saturday, March 08, 2025 – 10:00 am – 3:45 pm
H.R. MacMillan Space Centre
1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver
Registration
$50 for members, $60 for non-members and all tickets at the door.
PLEASE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY
To register for the Spring Study Day
Please send an e-transfer to danaatvhpg@gmail.com with your name or names in the note section.
Or send cheques payable to “Vancouver Hardy Plant Group”
c/o Elizabeth Taylor
3642 West 1st Avenue
Vancouver, BC, V6R 1H2 CA.
Fergus Garrett – Great Dixter, Northiam, UK
Fergus Garrett was raised in the United Kingdom and in Turkey, studying horticulture at Wye College, graduating in 1989.
Fergus has held the position of Head Gardener for the internationally acclaimed Great Dixter Garden in the UK since 1993. The charismatic gardener and writer Christopher Lloyd (1921-2006) with his unique gardening skills taught Fergus to keep the gardens of Great Dixter constantly changing throughout the seasons and to be adventurous in trying out new plants and plant-combinations.
In 2003, Christopher Lloyd founded The Great Dixter Charitable Trust to secure the legacy of Great Dixter House and Garden and in 2006, Fergus took over the position of the CEO. The Friends of Great Dixter and their continuous support helps the Trust to keep Great Dixter House and Garden open to the public, to develop educational programmes for all age groups and to make more people aware of the richness and importance of the biodiversity of Great Dixter’s gardens, meadows and woodland.
Fergus believes in passing on his knowledge and expertise through the national and international student- and volunteer-programmes at Great Dixter and via the many worldwide lectures he gives each year. He is a hands-on gardener and plantsman who has a keen interest in working practices. He is interested in ecology and how an ornamental garden and biodiversity interact. He is also keen on woodland management and green wood working. Fergus has written many magazine articles and lectures widely both nationally and internationally.
Today, Fergus continues with his role as CEO and Head Gardener at Great Dixter as well as spearheading several projects including the greening up of urban and suburban communities, biodiversity related projects in towns and villages, and training students from all over the world in the Dixter style of flower gardening.
Fergus’ hobbies and interests are looking at plants and plant communities in the wild; all things natural; geology; rocks; baskets; the sea and fish; cooking; boxing; Turkey and anything Turkish; rural crafts and nice people.
Fergus has been awarded numerous prestigious awards, culminating in 2019 with the highest accolade the Royal Horticultural Society can give: The Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH).
Presentations:
‘’Biodiversity at Great Dixter’’
Great Dixter is an iconic garden in the South East of England. It was the home to the late Christopher Lloyd – undoubtedly one of the greatest gardeners of our time. The recent biodiversity audit at Great Dixter has revealed how extraordinarily rich Great Dixter the gardens and estate are in wildlife. The garden hosts over 40% of the UK bee species count just within a few acres, including many rare and scarce species. Fergus will give the background to the biodiversity audit, uncovering the process involved as well as breaking down the reasons for such diversity, especially in an intensively gardened flower garden full of flowers.
The findings from Great Dixter will relate directly to other gardens large and small proving how important a resource these spaces are for conserving some of our most threatened species. Collectively, along with roadside verges, brownfield sites, and urban and suburban spaces, gardens can play an important role in the future.
‘‘Great Dixter: Past, Present and Future”
Fergus will talk about the history of Great Dixter, the 15C manor house and its restoration by the famous Arts and Crafts architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens. He will explore the influence of Nathaniel Lloyd on its infrastructure and design, and Daisy Lloyd, his wife, on the garden, which she softened with her semi-naturalistic style. It was she who was the major influence on their youngest son, Christopher, who became one of the world’s greatest gardeners and garden writers.
The design of the borders, the planting style, meadow gardening and the importance of a biodiverse garden will be discussed, including the experimental and creative aspects of each. Fergus will also discuss the way forward for a sensitive historic garden and estate such as Great Dixter, with reference to the setting up of The Great Dixter Charitable Trust to protect the legacy of the Lloyd family.
Fergus will share his memories of Christopher (Christo) Lloyd, their relationship, the way they worked together to develop Dixter, how they challenged and experimented with garden design, made decisions, and took the garden to another level.
Amy Sanderson – Stellata Plants, Saanich
Amy Sanderson is a gardener and owner of the specialty nursery Stellata Plants in Central Saanich. Originally from Edmonton, Alberta, Amy’s unquenchable thirst for better garden plants sent her on a study tour of English gardens, including Beth Chatto’s and Great Dixter. Subsequently, there was no choice but to move to Vancouver Island and open a nursery focused on resilient perennials. With a passionate interest in the future of ornamental horticulture, in 2018 Amy coordinated the first international Beth Chatto Symposium: Ecological Planting for the 21st Century.
She is a regular volunteer in the Doris Page Winter Garden at the Horticulture Centre of the Pacific. You can find regular updates on Instagram: @amysandersonflowers or @stellataplants
Presentation:
“Making Abundance”
The first five years of gardening and starting a specialty nursery on Vancouver Island have been a roller coaster. Every year has seen infrastructure improvements and garden expansion, experimentation with new plants in collaboration with new friends, novel weather extremes, and deeper exploration of Pacific Northwest ecosystems. Aided by the time-tested techniques of unfounded optimism and turning a blind eye, this lecture will revel in the joy of increasing seasonal dynamism, colour, and diversity with flowers in a garden culture that continues to champion irrigated evergreens.
Dave Demers, Cyan Horticulture, Vancouver
Dave Demers’s love for gardening sprouted early in life—he had his first greenhouse by age 10 and started a local garden club before graduating from high school. After studying horticulture in Montréal and New York, he travelled the world for internships in a variety of botanical collections and for plant-hunting expeditions. A Quebec transplant, Demers moved to the West Coast to work at Heronswood and finally settled in Vancouver, BC, where he runs Cyan Horticulture, a design/build/maintain landscape firm, as well as a small specialty plant nursery, Cyan Plants.
Presentation:
“Maximalist Gardening – Making the Most out of our Changing Ecologies”
Gardening is hip again: homeowners, designers and politicians alike seem to embrace plants for their many attributes. The importance of biodiversity – and bioabundance – has become a rallying call that gardeners are well equipped to answer.
And yet, the pressure of being under the spotlight, the finite resources and a changing climate, all contribute to making gardening more challenging than ever. In this talk, I will share some of my experience as a designer, a gardener and a former elected City official. I will go from a humble hell-strip trial to the expansive lawn-gone-wild roof meadow of a stylish furniture store, from no-mow City parks to generously planted private gardens.