Society News

The Heatherworld website is a reference site for heather species and cultivars from around the world. Its origins are in the ‘Handy Guide to Heathers‘ as published by the Heather Society in 1998, writen by David and Anne Small.

The aim is to keep it up-to-date, as far as possible, with new species and cultivars as they become available to the public. There should be descriptions and images for cultivars, as long as growers provide them to me. This will continue the work started by David and Anne Small those many years ago.

There is a lot of guidance on growing heathers, places to see them and some growers contacts on the website. There is also reference data for the old Heather Society, which closed in 2020.

This site does not sell heathers, so please do not send requests for plants. Help and guidance on growing heathers will be given on a best can do basis.

Despite repeated appeals via email and newsletter over the previous 3 years, no new people came forward to serve on The Heather Society (THS) committee. The workload on the existing committee became such that it was agreed that THS should close.

A new society as a donations-based, not-for-profit organisation, was being planned. However, with the demise of the Secretary, Phil Joyner, and other commitments, the remaining THS committee members failed to get a consensus on filling the roles of running a Heather Society (HS) organisation. As such, it was decided that HS was not viable.

The Heather World website will continue for the foreseeable future with the aim of making old and new cultivar descriptions available, being a general source of heather growing information, news, etc.

On 31 December 2020 The Heather Society(THS) ceased to exist as a charity registered in England and Wales by consensus among its members.  A new not-for-profit association, known simple as Heather Society(HS) is to be estalished, if enough committee members can be found, to continue the work of THS with emphasis on the promotion of heathers as garden-worthy plants.

This website will replace the old www.heathrsociety.org site, but links to the old site will continue to work.