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Autumn meeting 2025
Our next meeting is planned to be on Sunday 19th October 2025, at our usual place, Badger Farm, Winchester. This is at present provisional.
Note that this meeting is the day after the NAAS Nerine day at Exbury, which presents an opportunity for members from further afield to plan a longer trip to include both events.
Newsletters and Bulletins
- The latest newsletter is number 52 (November 2024). You can read or download all the SABG newsletters from our list of Newsletters.
- The latest Bulletin is number 52/3 (16 March 2025).
Bulb & Seed Exchange
- The November Seed and Bulb Exchange 2024 has now finished and Jon Evans has posted the bulbs and seeds to members who requested them.
- The next Bulb & Seed Exchange is the main Summer Bulb & Seed Exchange planned for August – September 2025.
- The lists of what was available in previous Exchanges can be seen at Bulbs and seeds distributed in SABG Bulb & Seed Exchanges
Meetings
- The SABG Autumn meeting will be on Sunday 19th October 2025 at Badger Farm Community Centre, Winchester. More details will be announced when available.
![//Lachenalia aloides// var. //aurea// [If you can't see the picture, perhaps your browser settings need changing.]](/_detail/pict5136-680x1100.png?id=start "//Lachenalia aloides// var. //aurea// [If you can't see the picture, perhaps your browser settings need changing.]")
Other dates
- SABG members are invited to join the NAAS visit to the Nerine collection in the Five Arrows Gallery and the glasshouses at Exbury Gardens, SO45 1AZ on Saturday 18th October 2025 at 10.30am for tea and biscuits and 11:00am for the Gallery opening. Further details at http://www.nerineandamaryllidsociety.co.uk/forthcoming-events.
- STOP PRESS! I have heard that Graham Duncan may be giving a talk in Sheffield in October 2025. This will probably be similar to the talk he will give at Tadley, and will obviously be a chance for members living in the North to see it and meet him. More details here when available!
News
- We hope to have a video of Graham Duncan’s talk “Agapanthus, Lachenalia and a lifetime spent at Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden: 1979 – 2024” available to SABG and NAAS members for viewing after the meeting. More details will follow when available. [27 March 2025]
- The new Haemanthus book from Dee Snijman is available online at https://www.sanbi.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2025_Strelitzia48.pdf [Jon Evans, 13 March 2025]
- I’ve just added to our digital library a PhD thesis spotted by Carl Garnham: A systematic revision of Drimiopsis Lindl. & Paxt. (Hyacinthaceae) by Pearl Dijeng ‘Matlhapi Lebatha (2004). Although it’s a thesis,with much botanical information, there are also colour photos and paintings of the species. [13 March 2025]
- I’ve just been asked a question about South African bulbs with prostrate or low-lying leaves. This led me to discover a botanical article on the subject, which mentions eight genera containing species with this habit, and seven potential hypotheses as to why they do it. I’ve added the article and a short note to our Digital library, under a new sub-heading “Botanical studies”. [11 February 2025]
- Sadly we have to report that Audrey Cain died on 23rd January 2025. Born in Kenya in October 1936, she moved to the UK in the early sixties. On the steamer from Cape Town to the UK she met the chief engineer, whom she later married. He died in the nineties, but Audrey continued to live in their house in Woolston, where she grew many alpines – she was active in the AGS. She also served on the SABG Committee for many years. Although she had been unable to get to a meeting for a long time, she had been very involved and enjoyed working on the plant sales table and talking with other members.
She was known for her collection of both hardy and tender bulbs, which she photographed when they flowered and documented their growth. She was an early pioneer in publishing these photos and associated information on the Web as her “BulbWeb” website. Although no longer available in its original form, a modified copy of Audrey Cain's BulbWeb has been restored. During the last ten years she had the foresight to ensure that her South African bulbs were gradually transferred to the care of Exbury Gardens.
Audrey’s funeral was held at Southampton crematorium on the 13th February, attended by family, friends and SABG members. [14 February 2025] - Website address: The old
sabg.tkdomain name has expired, is no longer recognised and will not give access to our web-site. We have been usingsabg.uksince 2022. Please make sure you change any old bookmarks (“favourites”) tosabg.ukas soon as possible. [31 January 2025]
Recent emails
The following emails were sent recently to all SABG members whose email addresses we have. (The dates are when the emails were sent, not the dates of any meetings or deadlines to which they might refer.) If you are a member and didn’t receive any of them, please email Richard White (see “Contacts” on this page). (If you’re not a member and are interested in what we do, see our pages About the SABG and How to join the SABG.)
- SABG Bulletin 52/3 (16 March 2025)
- SABG Bulletin 52/2 (25 February 2025)
- SABG/NAAS auction of Sue Bedwell’s books (9 February 2025)
- SABG/NAAS joint meeting on March 23rd: Graham Duncan talk (18 January 2025)
- SABG Bulletin 52/1 (24 December 2024)
- SABG Newsletter 52 (5 November 2024)
Remember that reasons for not receiving our emails include the following:
- You haven’t notified us of a change of email address (tell me now!)
- Your inbox is full or your total email quota has been exceeded (download and delete old emails!)
- Your email provider classifies some of our emails as “spam” (look in your “Spam” or “Junk” folder and mark our emails as “not spam”!)
- Our software encountered an error when sending
- We made a mistake (these things happen!)
We made changes (on 13 April 2022) intended to reduce the likelihood of our emails being regarded as spam. Please let me know (with a copy of the email) if anything from the SABG (with the SABG’s Lachenalia logo, rather than from an individual member) ends up in your Spam or Junk email folder. Thank you.
Autmn 2025 meeting
Our next meeting will be on Sunday 19th October 2025, and provisionally will return to our usual place, Badger Farm, Winchester.
Further details will be posted here in due course, including Directions to the meeting hall.
The provisional timetable is: The doors will open at 10.00, and the meeting will close at about 15.00. SABG and NAAS members, their guests and visitors are welcome. There will be a small admission charge. Parking is free.
More details of our meetings, including directions for getting there, are given on the meetings page.
Other meetings
- Saturday 18th October 2025: Nerine 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. These events are for NAAS members, but SABG members are also invited; see the NAAS events page, and please inform the NAAS Secretary Rosemary Walsh rosemary.walsh1@btinternet.com if you wish to attend so that numbers can be estimated.
- Saturday 1st November 2025: NAAS AGM, Holton Village Hall, near Oxford
Further information
- Help on cultivation, using the web site, etc.
- 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
- We will soon start an online forum.
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), 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.
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 Richard White richard@sabg.uk. See How to join the SABG.
- For enquiries about the Bulb & Seed Exchanges, email Jon Evans jon@sabg.uk. See Bulb & Seed Exchange.
- 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.uk.
Discussion
The following pages have discussion entries:
| Bulb topics | 11:23 14/04/2024 | Richard White | 0 Comments |
| Hardiness of South African bulbs | 15:12 10/04/2023 | Richard White | 1 Comment |
| How to grow South African bulbs | 15:41 30/03/2023 | Richard White | 1 Comment |
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[Copyright © 2024 by the Southern African Bulb Group and Richard White.]
start.txt · Last modified: 21:24 28/03/2025 by Richard White
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