Layering shrubs and the joys of bedding plants

Pretty, cream-edged leaves of Castanea sativa Argentomarginata

It has been so hot lately that for light relief I have been doing some weeding in the shady area I call the Oriental or Woodland Garden. One of the delightful plants we grow there is not at all oriental, a variegated Chestnut, currently a very healthy looking bush. Removing weeds from around it I considered trimming up some of the lower branches but on reflection decided to use them as layers. I really like layering as a technique, mostly because it is completely fool-proof, and we have propagated many plants in the garden this way.

My experience with layering goes back to my youth, when I worked at the Royal Gardens at Windsor. A large proportion of these gardens were developed under mature Oak trees and as a result leaf-raking was a major activity in our lives for six months of the year, or so it seemed. Some of these leaves were taken to stacks to slowly break down, to be put back into the ground as soil improver. Huge quantities were just raked onto the shrub beds, where they acted as wonderful mulch. This mulch also provided ideal conditions for shoots to root, having been covered in the process. I would often find nicely established layers of rare and unusual Rhododendrons and other shrubs around the gardens……one or two of these found their way back home to Cornwall.

Layering is a long-established, if slightly old-fashioned, commercial propagation technique for a number of plants, still practised for species which are slow or difficult to root. It is useful when a nurseryman requires only a few specimens of a particular tree or shrub, or when large plants are wanted quickly. Layer beds may be established to achieve this, producing plants by systems such as Simple, French, Serpentine or Tip Layering, depending on species. Fruit tree rootstocks are commonly produced by Stool layering.

Marigold Golden Puff from Suttons, next to self-seeded Verbena bonariensis

Here at the Academy, I laid down a shoot of our Chestnut into a hole I had dug close by, bringing it up again in a way that formed an elbow approximating a right angle. Soil was packed down on top, this bending interrupting the flow of sap and inducing root formation. In the past I have done the same with Cotinus Royal Purple and Viburnum x. hillieri ‘Winton’, and used other forms of layering with Wisteria, Rubus and many other subjects. I also use it to train plants like Lavender and Santolina, bending and earthing-up a branch to push a shrub in the direction I wish. These layers could be removed and sometimes they are – they make nice presents – but often they are just left in place to increase the size of the shrub.

A pot full of Coleus Kong

We have grown large numbers of bedding plants this year, knowing the garden would be disturbed by the installation of the swimming pool. These are now starting to flower, later than in the village streets and park, but they have better facilities than we do. I like to grow small numbers of a wide range of bedding so our annual parcels from the likes of Suttons and Thompson& Morgan are always an event. Gazania Daybreak Tiger Stripe (Suttons) is one of the earliest in flower in the front garden while Antirrhinum Axiom and Busy Lizzie Double Carousel from T&M have just started in the pool-side bed at the back. Sweet Pea  Prima Ballerina, grown over a metal climbing frame, has kept the house in flower for a while now. Also from T&M, Coleus Kong mix is at its best with us when well fed in a pot, but less good in the poor soil near the pool. Sutton’s Marigold Golden Puff is just beginning to look impressive, alongside the ornamental, purple-leaved Millet Purple Baron. There will be many more to report on as the season progresses.

You say Buddleja; I say Buddleia; let’s call it a Butterfly Bush

Buddleja davidii – a white form in the garden of the old peoples home in Chabris

What most people are thinking of when they say “Butterfly Bush” is Buddleja davidii, a species from China and Japan, cultivated in European gardens since the 1890’s. It can be invasive and in at least two states in the USA is listed as a noxious weed. There are more than 100 cultivars of this species, with recent breeding work attempting to reduce its size and make it more suitable for small modern gardens. Award of Garden Merit varieties include: B. davidii ‘Black Knight’, B. davidii ‘Blue Horizon’, B. davidii Camberwell Beauty, B. davidii ‘Dartmoor’, B. davidii ‘Darent Valley’, B. davidii Nanho Purple, B. davidii Nanho White, B. davidii ‘Royal Red’ B. davidii ‘Sunkissed’, B. davidii ‘White Profusion’, B. ‘Ellen’s Blue’, B. ‘Lochinch’, B. ‘Miss Ruby’, B. ‘Pink Delight, ‘B. ‘Silver Lilac’ and B. ‘West Hill’

Many other species of Buddleja exist however including the following awarded AGM by the Royal Horticultural Society: B. alternifolia, B. asiatica, B. fallowiana var. alba, B. globosa and B. × weyeriana ‘Sungold’.

Buddleja x. weyeriana variety

In our garden we grow B. lindleyana, which was discovered by George Forrest on the island of Chusan and introduced to western cultivation in 1843 by Robert Fortune, who named it for the botanist John Lindley (the RHS library is also named after him). A collector in the village has a lovely yellow variety, no doubt a form of B. × weyeriana – B. davidii x B. globosa – which we are now growing ourselves. Elsewhere in village gardens, a number of cultivars in a range of colours are in full flower.

Buddleja lindleyana at the Garden Design Academy, France

Not all Buddleja are hardy in this climate. I was recently attracted to an advertisement on EBay for B. colvilei, a stunning flower discovered by Hooker in 1849 and declared ‘the handsomest of all Himalayan shrubs’. The nursery in question was based in SW France, an area with a much kinder climate than we can offer. Tempting, all the same!

Courson Plant Fair 2012 – happy 30th birthday!

If you have been following these pages for any time you will know that one of my favourite plant fairs is the Journées des Plantes de Courson, in the countryside south of Paris.

Hydrangea paniculata ‘Pinky-­‐Winky’. Award winning Hydrangea at Courson 2010

Held twice a year since 1982, the October 2012 edition of the show is its 57rd and its 30^thbirthday. Clearly the stops will be pulled out for this session and 230 growers from around Europe will be selling their wares to an enthusiastic public; 30,000 visitors are expected over three days.

Each year the show has a theme and for 2012 the Hydrangea will be holding centre stage. Following on from a major international symposium on Hydrangea held in Angers earlier this year, the festival will be focusing on this genus and the related climbers, Schizophragma and Decumaria. Few visitors to previous shows will have failed to be impressed by the many new Hydrangea varieties on offer – I have succumbed to their charms myself

Hydrangea paniculata Great Star bought at Courson in 2009

  – so imagine this year will see the launch of several more.

As in previous year the Garden Design Academy will be offering guided tours to the festival, together with visits to the International Festival of Gardens at Chaumont sur Loire and a number of other important Loire Valley Gardens.

Perhaps we will see you there!

Great gardens of France – the final day

The kitchen garden at Cheverny

There are two ways to end a concert, a play, a novel or a garden tour: with a grand, spectacular display of colour, virtuosity or pyrotechnics, or gently, softly, pulling together all the elements and laying them out for quiet review. Dare I say it? I think we achieved a bit of both on our final day of touring the gardens of the Loire Valley.

Our first port of call was Cheverny and its famous château which, unusually for such a grand French palace, is available to visit inside and full of fine furniture and art. We did the tour after visiting the gardens, starting with the potager which, for some reason, I had never seen before. This section was a marvel, a beautiful example of kitchen garden mixing traditional and modern design, with rows of vegetables and flowers artfully arranged into the prettiest garden imaginable.

Photo opportunities at the Apprentices’ Garden, Cheverny

From here we moved on to the recently constructed Apprentices’ Garden which links the château to the orangery. Again, traditional and modern design mix to make a very satisfying whole. Around the château itself was a formal garden of the most strict design imaginable, but the final and largest area was the park in the English style, featuring many fine specimen trees, a place to explore and linger – but we had to push on, with lunch time beckoning.

Chambord

The journey was definitely part of the trip today. On the way to Cheverny we drove up the old driveway, miles of perfectly straight road aimed directly at the gates and doors of the château and lined with wonderful old trees. On the way to lunch we indulged in a detour to pass the Château de Chambord, a royal palace in the centre of a vast forest, the extravagant hunting lodge and pleasure park of the kings and queens of France. Lunch was in an old inn, now serving food of great quality, in the centre of the Sologne region of forests and lakes. Here we did linger, a little too long if truth be told, but the meal was rather good!

Iris germanica hybrids at La Source

Our last garden was quite different, the gardens of La Source, on the outskirts of Orleans amid the campus of the university. The river Loiret emerges in this park after a subterranean journey from, it is thought, the River Loire some way upstream, below a fine chateau and surrounded these days by a municipal park of the highest quality. Wonderful displays and trials of Iris, roses and bedding plants are a feature of the park, which is well used by locals in addition to garden visitors from all over France and around the world. Given our late arrival we rather galloped through the gardens, which deserved more time and consideration, but enjoyed the visit nevertheless. There is hardly a formal French garden feature to be found here; we found a very large, relaxed space dotted with horticultural interest and allowing us to reflect on the huge diversity of gardens we had experienced during the week.

The rose gardens and the chateau at Orleans La Source

Marie-Chantal had arranged an informal meal for our final evening, with local wines, cheeses and other products summing up the gastronomic life of the region in which we are pleased to live. Tomorrow our gusts would need ferrying to railway stations and the clean-up would begin. The tour had been a great success, we all agreed, and we counted our blessings in having had such a great group to spend our week with, exploring some of Europes great gardens.

Loire Valley garden tour – day 1

The new swimming pool

Finally I have a moment to write a blog post after a break of what, two or three weeks? The last fortnight has been dedicated to a Garden Design Academy guided tour and the straightening-up afterwards. I accumulated almost 2000 emails during this period and while half had been officially “dumped” by Mr Microsoft, they all needed checking to ensure I had not missed anything vital. The tour, a few rain storms and several weeks of chaos caused by the swimming pool installation, had also delayed all the usual spring season gardening tasks. Today, between bouts working on the computer, I have been rushing around the garden, partly to weed and plant, but also to make sure the swimming pools performs as expected: you can’t be too careful in these matters!

Our May tour of Loire Valley gardens was a great success with our Australian clients and the guide (me) all enjoying the wide range of gardens we had promised to show them. Day one was Bouges and Chenonceau. Bouges is very local to us so the tour started at a relaxed pace. The gardens are a great introduction to French landscaping and horticulture while the chateau visit was also fascinating. The gardens are divided into a walled flower and vegetable garden, a formal Italianate water garden, a classic French parterre and a large park in the English style.

After lunch at a local restaurant we went on to Chenonceau, a romantic place astride the river Cher, once the home both of French queens and a royal mistress. In addition to the park and maze, there are two formal flower gardens and a large, walled cut flower and vegetable potager. English television were filming when we arrived

Parterre at chateau de Bouges

Chateau de Chenonceau

The world’s worst landscape customer, Lily Beetles and the writings of Henry Mitchell.

Clematis Ville de Lyon.
Our plant for the week 20 on Pinerest:
http://pinterest.com/pin/254875660131789636/

I’ve built a lot of gardens over the years, as a garden designer and owner of a two landscape companies. I don’t have the figures to hand but basic mental arithmetic puts the total built at around 500, while we have designed perhaps three times that.

Some of the people we worked for were not nice, some were dishonest and others unreasonably demanding. But the worst client ever? It could be me!

Iris Frost ‘ n’ Flame, one of the twenty or so varieties of Iris germanica we have in flower at the moment.

The problem is I know too much. At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, if a landscaper makes a mistake I can see it easily. While customers may complain about little things, they very often miss the fundamental errors which, in the case of our companies, I like to think I would spot and have corrected before any harm was done. Sometimes garden builders and landscapers will try to explain away the problems, justifying them, excusing them or denying they exist. We have years of experience behind us and can see through all that. That’s great if you are employing me to look out for your interests, but a disaster waiting to happen if you are working for us. I say “us”, but my wife is being much more mature and reasonable.

The Garden Design Academy and Les Sequoias, our B&B, are currently having a swimming pool built and I am not enjoying the process one little bit. I moan, I complain, I ask difficult questions, I get in the way. I know it’s not helpful but I just can’t stop myself. The French in general have a view about dealing with customers which is quite foreign to anything my clients expect and demand. I love it here, so I am reluctant to support the Anglo-Saxon stereotyping of the French by describing all of our problems, but I had hoped for a bit more service and consideration when I am spending my hard-earned cash with a company.

I mention all this mainly to address those of you who run businesses, and we have many students who do just that or will do so in the near future. I suggest they try to look at their operations from the point of view of a client. Are you welcoming, professional and transparent in what you are offering? Is your brochure easy to understand, your garden centre easy to navigate, your products easy to purchase? Have you thought about who your clients are and how you should address them, communicate with them, and explain things to them? Are you, your staff, your establishment and your marketing materials user-friendly? Do your products live up to the sales literature; can you do what you promise to do, on time and at a reasonable price?

Geranium Johnson’s Blue with Hostas in our woodland garden

From my point of view, what this swimming pool company lacks is a single point of reference for a client; someone who is in charge of every aspect of the job, can ensure that it is done well and that the client is kept fully informed. This person needs to be on site regularly. Teams of expert installers come and go seemingly at random – a day here, two days next week and three days the week after that. Most of them seem competent enough and reasonable friendly, but lacking hands-on leadership. We see minor and serious errors occur with each visit, and have to point them out ourselves. My wife spotted early on that the built-in stairway was installed in the wrong corner, averting the most serious mistake before it became too costly to correct. We have to repeat instructions and warnings to every team that walks in the door and I have lost count of the number of times I have asked them to be careful with our plants, only to watch them being buried under tons of earth, run over by machinery or trodden underfoot. I’m a nervous wreck now and can’t wait for them to go!

There is a place for human and other resource efficiencies and cost-saving business strategies, but when these interfere with good customer relationships it is time to reconsider your options. Do it anyway, on a regular basis and before minor irritations become magnified over time and customers are lost to more considerate competitors. At least the French don’t kill my plants and then demand Hobnobs with their tea!

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Lilium regale in flower last year

This is an incredibly busy time in the garden with seed to sow, seedlings to care for and pot on, tidying up the borders and lawns and weeding, weeding, weeding. A regular job cannot be ignored at this time of the year however busy one is. Every day, two or three times a day, we go hunting for Lily Beetles. This bright red beasties will eat every morsel of lily leaf they can find and must be collected and dispatched by hand, before they can do too much damage. It’s worth it, not only for the sake of the Lilies: if you have to deal with the larvae, disgusting things covered in their own excrement, the task is far worst. Those who grow a few Lilies and do not know this pest should look it up in gardening books or on the internet; I tried taking a photograph for this blog post, but they move as soon as they sense your presence. It is important to say that while all these tasks keep a gardener rushing around from one side of the garden to the other, time should always be found to admire the flowers which are everywhere at this time of the year. If not for pleasure, what is a garden for?

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We do not always receive as much response to these ramblings as I would like, but one recent comment on Cannas quoted the American garden writer Henry Mitchell. I was so intrigued by the remark that I ordered a copy of The Essential Earthman and have really enjoyed that gardener’s insights and observations. A real plantman, I have found myself reaching for the RHS Encyclopaedia several times to check on plants he recommends or otherwise. I like him, but suspect he was not always easy to get on with. He died on November 12^th 1993, before I could read his articles “live”.

A little Tropicana in the garden – we try out a few Cannas

Cannas were all the rage in bedding schemes of the Victorian age. The public authorities thought of them as ideal as dot plants, adding height and an exotic feel to planting which were rarely subtle and frequently brash. These schemes were often dismissed as vulgar by Gertrude Jekyll and many other horticultural experts of the day, who bemoaned the demise of the simple garden flowers that in many cases disappeared as a result, but there is no doubting their popularity at the time.

Enthusiasm for Cannas returned with the advent of patio gardening and compact forms were bred to create plants more suitable for smaller properties and for container growing. Recently however, our Cannas have been threatened by viruses which can affect the beauty of the plants and may eventually lead to death.  The three viruses involved are Bean yellow mosaic virus (BYMV) and Canna yellow streak virus (CaYSV) which are not passed from parents to seeds, and Canna yellow mottle virus (CaYMV), which is. Symptoms include streaking or mottling of leaves and flowers, stunted and distorted growth, and worst.

This has led some breeders and growers to attempt to produce virus free varieties, either by cleaning up existing cultivars using meristem tissue culture, or creating new ones from seed. Global plant health is not helped however, by growers who continue to sell infected plants and by gardeners who have diseased plants in their gardens. Several growers have reduced their ranges to a fraction of those they previously offered, determined to provide only virus free material to their clients. Others are less scrupulous.

We obtained a range of Cannas from our local garden centre, all with the label of a particular Dutch grower who I contacted by email. He was happy to discuss the theory of Canna viruses but less clear as to whether my purchases were virus free. The varieties selected were:

• Australia or ‘Feuerzauber’ – deep burgundy-black foliage with a satin-like sheen and the intense colour which holds superbly during the summer heat. The foliage rises to 4-5′, topped with a magnificent display of large, shocking red flowers
• Durban – outrageously colourful plant to 4-7 feet tall. The new foliage emerges with dark red stripes highlighted with pink, bronze, and pale yellow striping and ages to a bronze-green with yellow stripes. The large orange-red flowers are an added bonus. In England and Europe this plant is sometimes called ‘Red Durban’ to distinguish it from another plant that they call Durban, which the United States goes by the name ‘Phasion’ and is a patented variety. Canna ‘Phasion’ is a dark stripped leaf canna with dark maroon foliage and yellow to pink stripes. The flowers are large and orange……… Heaven only knows which one we have.
• Kreta – could this also be C. (island series) Crete? red with green leaves.
• Pretoria – bright green and yellow variegated foliage and deep tangerine flowers.
• Striped Beauty – silvery white and green pinstriped leaves; red bud opens into a clear yellow flower with a small white stripe on each petal; one of the oldest, most reliable of the variegated cannas.

I am delighted to give these a try around the new swimming pool and will be reporting back on progress as the year warms up.

Picking up the pieces – the joys and frustrations of the spring garden

Easter weekend; it’s cooler than we would like but the predicted rains did not come, much to the pleasure of visitors and the disappointment of local gardeners, who have not seen rain in months. The annual Donkey Fair and flea market took over the streets of nearby Poulaine, a huge success, attracting crowds of locals and weekend trippers from as far away as the capital, Paris.

Cherry blossom time in central France

Local gardens, ours included, are bursting with spring blossom – Daffs and tulips going over, Cherries at their peak and Lilac just starting – distracting the eye from the damage caused by the single tough week of winter we experienced this year. Each day we are out there, checking for signs of life from plants which look like they will never recover. And each day there is another happy discovery of tiny buds opening at the base of an otherwise lifeless shrub, or shoots pushing up from a bare patch of ground.

Once the extent of the problem is clear I can get out the secateurs, cutting out dead wood to make way for new healthy shots. Santolina was hard pruned a couple of weeks ago and is now covered with tiny green leaves; Phlomis, both P. fruticosa and P. purpurea, have recently had the same treatment. Reddish buds are expanding all along the shots of the flowering Pomegranate, Punica granatum ‘Rubrum Flore Pleno’, a fine little plant given to me by a local gardener. I have since successfully taken cuttings from a large shrub in a friend’s garden and those too are budding up.

Still a few Tulis around

Our three Phygelius varieties are all now starting to grow from ground level and today I spotted buds at the base of the hardy Fuchsia magellanica gracilis ‘Tricolor’. As exciting as all this is, there are also disappointments. Two varieties of Phormium look as if they have departed this world, along with Hebe Great Orme and a white flowering species whose name escapes me for the moment. You can knock me over with a feather if life returns to our Leycesteria Golden Lanterns: such a pity.

Lemon trees? Don’t talk to me about Lemon trees! We have lost many, but not all, of our Camellias and the Mimosa, Sophora, and Erythrina are no longer with us. They can stay in the ground for a while yet to give them a chance to prove me wrong. A few plants bought this winter didn’t even see the soil before they succumbed – I wouldn’t want you to get the idea I’m bad at this gardening lark, but unfortunately the list is even longer than this. I refuse to dwell on it further. A gardener has to develop a philosophical attitude or you would give up after the first few disasters. Failure comes with the territory I’m afraid.

The plant fair at Chateau de La Bordaisiere

Easter Monday is a public holiday and the third day of the plant fair at La Bourdaisiere, a chateau close to Tours in the Indre-et Loire. I have talked about this chateau and its amazing tomato collection before, but this was our first visit. It is a lovely chateau with formal terraces and Italianate stairways in a wooded park above the River Cher. The walled vegetable garden is around 4 acres in size and in the season they also have a notable Dahlia display. The plant fair was spread around the grounds encouraging visitors to explore as much as possible. There was a good selection of plant nurseries and some interesting gardening accessories but to my surprise we left empty-handed, apart from a large sack of a new mulching material called Strulch, developed by Leeds University and marketed by an English company. Perhaps it’s just as well, with the new swimming pool excavations causing chaos throughout the garden. Time enough to buy more plants when this work is done and a new planting plan agreed upon.

Cuckoos, spring blossom and the Cheverny plant fair

Magnolia stellata in the white border at the Garden Design Academy

People have been telling me for ages that the cuckoos have arrived but now I can report that they genuinely have returned to the woods around Chabris. Last Friday was our first sighting (hearing?), within the range of arrival dates we have been noting since we moved to central France.

The cuckoos tend to bring the warm weather with them and it has been very warm these last few days, with temperatures in the shade a full 10°C above normal. Apricots, peaches, and cherries are all in flower in the gardens and here and there deciduous Magnolias, in colours ranging from purest white to deepest purple, can be seen in many gardens, including a M.stellata smothered with flowers in our own. Visiting the plant fair at the Chateau de Cheverny over the weekend, we photographed a stunning yellow variety called Magnolia (acuminata x. denudata) ‘Elizabeth’ bred by Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and named after a benefactor, Elizabeth van Brunt.

Magnolia Elizabeth at the Fete des Plantes at the Chateau de Cheverny

Having a young yellow hybrid tree already we resisted the temptation to buy this, but did come back with a nice handful of plants. Tiarella Spring Symphony is one of the new hybrids with highly attractive leaves and improved flowers. This repeat flowering, clump-forming variety blooms in spring, producing 15cm spikes densely packed with pink blossoms. Its deeply cut foliage is compact, with black markings along the midrib. Tiarellas are at home in moist woodland environments and we hope it will be just perfect under the Sequoia. I should have bought half a dozen really, to form a ground covering group.

Tiarella Spring Symphony

Our left-hand bed will need a complete redesign once the swimming pool goes in, and we thought Arundo donax Variegata would be ideal, adding vertical lines and an exotic feel close to the water. It was bought from the stand of the local horticultural college, who were not at all impressed that I offer courses to students via the internet! Calycanthus occidentalis, the Spice Bush native to the mountains of central and northern California, came from the National Arboretum Des Barres, who were offering all sorts of rarities for sale. I have never grown this shrub, but have seen it in a number of gardens and we look forward to having it in flower this summer.

Olivet nurserymen Piermant are specialists in Hydrangea and Viburnum and from them came evergreen Viburnum x globosum Jermyns Globe. A chance seedling of V. x globosum (V. davidii x V. calvum) found at Hillier’s West Hill Nursery, ‘Jermyns Globe’ is a large shrub, extremely dense and rounded in habit. White flower heads are followed by blue fruits, which persist until the following spring. Most gardeners will think it is a form of Viburnum tinus, so it should be a conversation piece. Our final plant is a very interesting find, Forsythia koreana Kumsun, a most unusual and unique form. While having familiar, golden-yellow flowers in early spring, it leafs out to reveal highly unusual, variegated leaves – an intricate network of decorative veins in the leaves that is extremely rare in nature and incredibly attractive. Since this leaf colour lasts throughout the entire growing season, it takes the ornamental value of forsythias into a whole new season – from the emergence of flower buds in early spring, through the luxuriant growth of summer, to the arrival of frosts in late autumn. Tim Wood, of Spring Meadow Nurseries in the USA discovered it while visiting Kwan-gnu-ng Arboretum and Sungkyunkwan University in Korea in 1999, since when it has been on trial with several nurseries.

Forsythia Kumsun leaves

The ‘fête des plantes’ was a great success with well over 100 exhibitors this year, raising money for Rotary Club good causes and attracting a good crowd of visitors on a gorgeous, sunny weekend.

First day of spring? Let’s go to a plant fair!

Last year at the Cheverny plant fair

Today is the first day of spring and here in central France we were greeted by a crisp frost, swiftly followed by a gorgeous, sunny day. Time to start planning our gardening event diary, I think.

Spring gets off to a great start this weekend with both a Fête des plantes at the Château de Cheverny while, in the village of Cour-Cherverny around the corner, one of our favourite wine producers is holding an open day. Life doesn’t get much better! Cheverny has a page dedicated to its gardens on the Loire Valley Gardens web site.

Forsythia for the first day of spring

At the end of the month I plan to visit the Fête des Plantes Vivaces at Domaine de Saint-Jean de Beauregard in the Essonne department, 30 minutes south of Paris. I say “plan” because every year so far something has prevented me attending this, one of the major French plant fairs. More than 200 exhibitors will be showing their wares at the show and a series of lectures and conferences are to be held over three days. They even accept dogs on leads, so Pixie the Poodle can come. We have our tickets and nothing short of a national disaster will keep me away this year.