Members' Weekend and Plant Exchange 2026 in Suffolk

It's going to be a great weekend with tours, talks, garden visits and National Collection open days. Several gardens are being opened just for us on Sunday 7 June (see below for details - please contact the venues directly with any questions).

Accommodation and food: Bury St Edmunds, a beautiful cathedral city, has a wide range of places to stay both in the centre and further out, as well as excellent places to eat and drink. See the note below for suggestions.

Travel and hotel info

Gardens to visit on Sunday 7th

Suffolk National Collections

The Plant Exchange will be taking place too. Plant Exchange coordinators will be able to drop plants off between 3pm & 5pm on Friday 5 June (details will be sent out closer to the time). Plants will be ready to collect by 4pm on Saturday 6 June. 

Both the Friday dinner and Saturday have complete sold out. If you have booked a space and cannot come for any reason, please let us know by emailing membership@plantheritage.org.uk as soon as possible so we can offer your space to someone else. Thank you.

Programme

Friday 5 June (for those with a dinner ticket)

6.30 pm - Three course dinner at the beautiful Grade 1 listed Guildhall in Bury St Edmunds, followed by a talk by plantaholic Philip Oostenbrink about plant collections, plant hunters, plant crazes and his own National Collections, including fascinating finds on his recent visit to Japan (part funded by bursaries from Plant Heritage and the RHS). The bar will be open for pre-dinner drinks from 6.30pm (NB the venue only accepts cards, not cash) and we will move through to the Banqueting Hall for dinner at 7pm. 

Saturday 6 June (for those with a ticket for Saturday)

10.00 am - Meet at Helmingham Hall for small group tours of the fabulous grade 1 listed gardens, designed by Lady Tollemache, whose family has owned and lived at the Hall since 1480.

11.30 am - We will move on to nearby Framsden Hall Barn, another outstanding listed building on the estate that we are very lucky to borrow for the day by kind permission of Lord and Lady Tollemache. In his book 'Buildings of England: Suffolk', Sir Nikolaus Pevsner describes it as '... a fine barn, 200ft long. Ground Floor late 17th or 18th century brick, upper floor timber with brick nogging'.

You will find displays of some of the 22 National Collections held in Suffolk and specialist nurseries offering plants for sale.

After a buffet lunch in the beautiful barn, we will enjoy talks by 3 great speakers:

· Roderick Newton - Plant Heritage Chairman, who has a National Collection of pre 1950 Bearded Irises of around 550 varieties built up over 50 years, as well as lots of other fascinating plants.

· Lady Tollemache - Garden designer, creator of the modern gardens at Helmingham hall, Chelsea Gold Medal winner and member of the RHS Herbaceous Plant Expert Group

· Robert Brett - Curator of RHS Garden Wisley. Robert has more than three decades of experience in botanical garden management, plant collections, and landscape development. Formerly Curator of RHS Garden Hyde Hall, he has also held senior roles at The Eden Project, Cambridge University Botanic Garden, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

We will round off the day with refreshments. Plants from the Plant Exchange will be ready to collect by 4.00 pm. If you have not been involved before, find out more here: Plant Exchange. Offers were made in the autumn and requests were submitted in Jan/Feb. The team are now matching these up. 

Sunday 7th June there will be plenty more gardens and places for you to visit - see the note above for more information. 

If you have any questions, please just let us know (email membership@plantheritage.org.uk) and we will do our best to help.