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Bulb & Seed Exchange
Deadline 14th August – please read on …
Jon Evans is running the popular Bulb and Seed Exchange again this year. This Exchange is a key part of our activities, so we are hoping as many of you as possible will provide your spare bulb or seed material for the benefit of other members! Please note that although we call it an exchange, if you don’t yourself have material to offer, you will still be able to request seeds or bulbs from the list in exchange for a suitable donation to cover at least the cost of postage and packing.
Read the full version of the instructions which includes more details for participants and a description of difficulties in exchanging material with overseas members. This is a service for SABG members only. If you are not already a member and would like to take part, please read About the SABG and How to join the SABG.
The timetable this year is as follows:
- If you have bulbs or seeds available, please post them to Jon Evans (postal and email addresses in the announcement and in Newsletter 55), to arrive by Friday 14th August. Please follow his instructions for posting the material. Please include a list of your donations, and send it by email if possible.
- If you expect to have items available later, towards the end of August, please send Jon a list of your intended donations, with any supporting information, by email or post, to arrive by Friday 14th August, and post any such donations by Friday 28th August at the latest.
- The list of what is available to request will be sent out on 16th August.
- There will be a further exchange later in the year for autumn ripening seed etc.
- The lists of what was available in previous Exchanges can be seen at Bulbs and seeds distributed in SABG Bulb & Seed Exchanges
Autumn 2026 meeting
The Autumn 2026 meeting will be on Sunday 25th October 2026 at Heath End Village Hall, Heath End Road, Baughurst (near Tadley, between Basingstoke and Reading) RG26 5LU https://www.heathendvillagehall.co.uk/
In the morning, Jonny Hartnell will talk on “An overview of the Nerine genus including cultivation and propagation”.
Jonny has always had a real passion for plants and this really took off following retirement from a fascinating career in the nuclear industry. A relocation back to Somerset (close to where he originally grew up) has given him the space and time to really expand his horticultural interests. He grows a huge range of plants in various greenhouses, polytunnels, indoors and in the garden. The range includes South African bulbs (he has previously been chairman of the Nerine and Amaryllid Society and continues to be heavily involved as treasurer and organising the bi-annual bulb and seed exchange), orchids (including both hardy and tropical, showing at Devon Orchid Society shows), woodland plants including snowdrops, tree ferns, as well as trying to be self sufficient in fruit and vegetables. He gives a range of talks to garden clubs on his interests including his travels to various parts of the world visiting botanic gardens and nature reserves.
In the afternoon, in addition to any other short talks which are offered or discussions which happen, our new Treasurer Mark Wessels will give a talk on “The life and plants of the Hutton’s – 19th century Cape Colony plant collectors”.
Mark’s interest in South African plants was initiated following a holiday to the Western Cape a number of years ago. Since that time, he has taken a special interest in geophytes from the region and enjoys the challenges of growing Gladiolus and Moraea species, and has just started collecting Nerine species. Although most of the collection of bulbs are winter growing, he is interested in growing summer flowering species for garden planting. Mark also has a small collection of pelargoniums and ‘mesembs’. Having moved to North Yorkshire from Norfolk the change in weather/climate has meant new ideas and practices have had to be adopted to ensure success with the South African plants. He has an interest in plant collectors and exploration along with botanical illustration although he is a ‘hopeless’ painter! [Mark’s words, not mine!]
More details of our meetings, including directions for getting there, are given on the meetings page.
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 17th October 2026 at 10.30am for tea and biscuits and 11:00am for the Gallery opening. Further details at http://www.nerineandamaryllidsociety.co.uk/forthcoming-events.
Newsletters and Bulletins
- The latest newsletter is number 55 (July 2026). You can read or download all the SABG newsletters from our list of Newsletters.
- The latest Bulletin is number 54/1 (23 May 2026).
- Bulletin number 55/1 will be emailed soon.
![//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.]")
News
- New additions to our Digital library include: Pauline Perry (1990) Bulbinella -- a neglected garden plant?, Veld and Flora, December 1990 [7 November 2025]
- Graham Duncan visited the UK again in October 2025, during which his main purpose was to photograph Nerines in cultivation. Thanks to an invitation by SABG member Peter Kohn, Graham gave a talk entitled “Kirstenbosch, the most beautiful garden in Africa, and its collection of South African bulbs”, in the Dorothy Fox Education Centre in Sheffield Botanical Gardens on October 14th, attended by about 100 people. The meeting was hosted by the Friends of the Botanical Gardens, Sheffield, of which Peter is currently Acting Chair. [15 October 2025]
- The SABG is 21 this year! The original announcement about the formation of the Group appeared on 4th April 2004 in “The African Garden” web site run by David Fenwick. Unfortunately the original site may no longer exist, but thanks to the excellent work by the people at the Internet Archive (archive.org) a preserved copy of the web site can be seen at The African Garden. [20 August 2025]
- The list of bulbs and seeds in the 2025 Bulb & Seed Exchange is available: requests from SABG members to reach Jon Evans by 30th August. [16 August 2025]
- A video of Graham Duncan’s talk “Agapanthus, Lachenalia and a lifetime spent at Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden: 1979 – 2024” is available to SABG and NAAS members for viewing after the meeting. SABG members can email Richard for the link. [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]
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.)
| Date | Subject |
|---|---|
| 10 August 2026 | Bulletin 55/1 |
| 10 July 2026 | Newsletter 55 |
| 23 May 2026 | Bulletin 54/1 |
| 5 November 2025 | Newsletter 54 |
| 3 November 2025 | Bulb & Seed November (Ephemeral) Exchange list |
| 13 October 2025 | Bulletin 53/3 |
| 31 August 2025 | Bulletin 53/2 |
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!)
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.
Other meetings
- Saturday 17th October 2026: 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 7th November 2026: 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 |
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[Copyright © 2026 by the Southern African Bulb Group and Richard White.]
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