• Our activities

The SABG is based in the United Kingdom 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 plants (which botanists call geophytes) from South Africa. These 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. Many of our members are also interested in similar plants from other parts of the world with “Mediterranean” climates (which can therefore be grown in similar conditions).

Our activities include two meetings per year with talks and plant sales (recently these have been in Winchester in southern England), one or two Bulb & Seed Exchange per year, and three or four Newsletters 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.

• More about the SABG
• About the SABG web site

We are a small informal non-for-profit club or society, run entirely by and for the benefit of our members. Our aims and principles are set out further in our Constitution. Guidelines for our operating procedures, which might be updated more frequently, will be set out separately.

See How to join the SABG, or to enquire about joining, visit the Contacts page.

Information about our compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can be found in our Privacy Policy.