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Plants on trial – a sneaky peak

I have always been a fan of over the top, in your face bedding displays and every year I plant out hundreds of plants in beds, pots and baskets. Over the last few years, due to work commitments, I have been finding the up keep a bit difficult.Alstroemeria ‘Planet Mix’Last year I planted…

Decorating with Houseplants

Image: Shutterstock This guide to decorating with houseplants shows you how to get creative with plant shape, texture, colour and size. Plants breathe life into sterile spaces and which houseplants you select and how you arrange them will affect the dynamics of your space and create different…

Why is Sustainable Gardening so Important These Days?

In essence, sustainable gardening is not a new term, but the practice has started gaining traction recently. What gardening sustainably means, what does the process involve, and what makes it so important today? What is Sustainable Gardening? It is vital to make one crucial distinction. Cultivating…

Gardening without plastic

A few small changes can make a big difference Image: Garden Ninja We're flooding the planet with plastic, and there's currently a huge focus on how much ends up in our oceans. But as gardeners, what can we do about it? Traditionally, plant care and propagation have always relied heavily on plastic…

All Things Bright and Beautiful

Begonia Non-stop Mocca' adds a splash of colour to any garden Copyright: Benary After a busy week with barely a peep outside, I went into the garden this morning and felt a none-too-subtle shift from high summer towards early autumn. There I was last Sunday extolling the virtues of planting for…

Windowsill Gardening

I have been gardening since I was knee high to my Grandad, he taught me as much about gardening when I was a nipper as I learnt at school about reading and writing! My father is also a keen gardener and so I have had a very well rounded gardening education. I have been working as a self employed…

Winter Plants – Pretend it’s summer all through the winter

Don’t get caught out with empty pots and desolate borders this winter. Just a few minutes ordering some winter plants now will ensure your garden is a riot of colour this winter, just as it has been all summer!Pansies are a staple of the winter garden. They thrive in cold, icy weather, and if…

Late summer sophistication with rudbeckia?á

Nic has planted Rudbeckia 'Savannah Mixed' alongside grasses in her own gardenImage: Nic Wilson of dogwooddays Midsummer is a time of plenty in the garden with roses blooming, sweet peas in their prime and borders a riot of colour. But as summer progresses and cottage garden stalwarts begin to…

Pass Me My WW1 Trenching Tool

Oh but wasn't I right - as the nights draw in we wistfully reminisce about the long hot summer of 2018. Get over it! Time to move on! And move on we have; half the garden is enjoying the extrovert opulence of autumn and half, well, the other half has been dug up! The prospect of a year out of…

Gardening with grasses

Hakonechloa macra and Ophiopogon combine to create this stunning borderImage: dogwooddays Do your borders lack colour, height and movement throughout the year? Professional garden designer Nic Wilson of dogwooddays recently redesigned the beds in her own back garden to striking effect. Her secret…

Top 10 best-selling plants of 2012

This list of Thompson & Morgan’s top 10 best-selling plants is quite a mix – from cottage garden favourites to new and unusual flowers – and shows that customers really do like variety when it comes to their gardens!Apple Cox’s Orange Pippin1. Apple Cox’s Orange…

News update from Thompson & Morgan

Alstromeria Holiday Valley, Alstromeria Spring Valley' and Alstromeria Times Valley' Further 'reveals' from our new Spring RangeWe've just released details and images of a number of new products that will feature in our Spring 2020 range. All three of the striking varieties in the new Summer…

Plants for Pets: A Guide to Pet-Friendly Houseplants

Pets and plants don't always go together. My 'Border Terrorists', Ogmore and Dylan, are notorious for chomping foliage. Whilst they mainly graze on Dog Mercury and other outdoor weeds, they have also unleashed their rasping tongues on my once elegant Bamboo Palm ( Dypsis lutescens),leaving it…

Guide to pet-friendly house plants

Plants and pets are two things that we adore in life. Unfortunately, many common plants are toxic to cats and dogs. Since some plants are poisonous, once eaten, they cause convulsions, tremors, and even death. Even the most well-behaved pets are sure to nibble a houseplant at a particular moment.…

Sweet Pea tops the Best Seller list

New seed varieties proving popular with T&M customers.Thompson & Morgan is pleased to announce the top 3 best-sellers from its list of newly-launched seed varieties.Bestselling Sweet Pea ‘Erewhon’Sweet Pea ‘Erewhon’ along with Nasturtium ‘Crimson Emperor’…

Lorraine Pullen – The Good Life – Well Maybe!

Read Lorraine Pullen’s post about her first year of blogging.I became a blogger just over 12 months ago when I started my own blog entitledThe Good Life – Well Maybe!The “Well Maybe” was added as I was a recently retired public servant, with little experience of growing…

Best plants for low hedges

Low box hedging surrounding parterre beds at National Trust Wimpole Estate. Image: Canva There are many situations that call for a low hedge. It could be a formal edging to a border or path, a way to divide up a small garden into separate areas without cramping the space, a structural backdrop to…

Top 10 plug plants

Plug plants are a convenient and easy way to fill your garden with colour. Although seeds are cheaper to buy, there is often a lot of work involved, from germination to pricking out tiny seedlings. Cuttings also pose the same problem, requiring nurturing undercover for some time and with varying…

How to grow Hyacinth bulbs in water

Hyacinths such as Berries and Cream Mixture can be grown in water to enjoy throughout the depths of winterCopyright: Dutch Gardens Growing hyacinths in water gives you the chance to enjoy vibrant and beautifully scented spring bulbs in the depths of winter. In fact, with a little bit of planning,…

Rise of the bedding plants

Fill your beds and borders with show stopping bedding plantsImage: Begonia semperflorens 'Organdy Mixed' F1 Hybrid from Thompson & MorganBedding plants became incredibly popular in the Victorian era, when specialist plant hunters were dispatched to find new and unique specimens to add colour…

Fifty shades of green

Couldn’t get tickets for the opening weekend of Fifty Shades of Grey? Get out in the garden instead; try our Fifty Shades of Green this season!We now offer a range of over 300 mature shrubs and perennials for instant impact in your garden. No garden should be without hassle-free herbaceous…

Low-maintenance outdoor plants for busy gardeners

Plants are beautiful decorations for your garden, and luckily there are many of those which are easy to care for if you have a busy lifestyle. There are plenty of varieties that don't need staking, frequent deadheading and dividing, complicated pruning, or excessive watering. Below we've listed the…

Top gardening trends

2014 is all about big planting schemes, perennials doubling up as annuals and falling in love with shrubs again. Here are our top gardening trends…Begonia ‘Lotto Mixed’BIG plantingLots of gardeners are starting to get wise with their planting schemes and choosing plants that give…

Happy New Year

Back in January 2017, I had this crazy idea to photograph the back garden from the same point, on the same date, each month! Some might think I'm mad, I probably did myself back then, but it is interesting, even for me, to take a look at the 12 images as a picture diary of what happened in the…

Garden pests and other wildlife!

[et_pb_section bb_built="1″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type="4_4″][et_pb_text] Early summer is the perfect time to step out in the garden with a nice cuppa, and bathe in the satisfaction that all of that hard work this spring was worth the effort. And so it was that whilst surveying my…

Perfect for pollinators

Give your garden a pollinator friendly makeoverImage: Dogwooddays Planting for pollinating insects has never been more important. As insect populations decline across the world, we need to find ways to help these essential invertebrates, for our future as well as theirs. Gardeners can play a vital…

Top 10 Fuchsia Plants

Fuchsias are extremely versatile with a variety on the market suitable for most situations. Few other plants perform so well in the garden with so little upkeep, even the tender types can make it through winter with minimal protection. Fuchsia plants are easy to grow, long-lasting and make the…

Growing your own cut flowers

Who doesn’t love a jug of flowers on the kitchen table?When students arrive I pop warm muffins and a pot of fresh Fairtrade coffee on the kitchen table next to a jug of flowers. It makes people feel welcome and there are always comments on how lovely the flowers are.  But when it comes to…

What grew in the garden

Looking for something new to try in your garden next year?Image: Shelli Jensen This spring, we asked five of our favourite garden bloggers if they were planning anything new and exciting over the summer. Their responses varied from experiments with onions to enticing a hedgehog into their garden,…

An Amazing May

Hi Everyone, What an amazing May, so hot and dry! Hope this isn't our summer. I have a confession to make - I've not done half as much in the greenhouses as I would usually do. Don't get me wrong, I love being in them, or in my garden, but with limited energy, mobility and dexterity I have not been…

Inspiring indoor gardening blogs

Take advice from these expert houseplant bloggersImage: Houseplant 'Urban Jungle' Collection from T&M Growing indoor plants is fun, rewarding and even good for your health. House plants purify the air, help counteract mould and fungi, and the sight of foliage and flowers in the midst of winter…

The Colour Purple

Well, technically it's not 'the colour purple' but rather Pantone Ultra Violet 18-3838, that's predicted to be the colour of the year - but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue now, does it? Whilst purple is supposed to suggest the mysteries of the cosmos, intrigue and ingenuity, I am more…

News update from Thompson & Morgan

Begonia MacaRouge', Busy Lizzie Wild Romance White' and Busy Lizzie Wild Romance Red' New Spring Range Preview Plant selection for our 2020 spring range is well under way. As always, full details are kept secret until the launch, but we can give you a sneak preview of a couple of plants that…

12 Instagram feeds for flower lovers

This collection's all about the flowers Image: shutterstock Breathtaking blooms, inspirational arrangements and expert growing advice are yours at the swipe of a screen on Instagram. Here you'll find growers, stylists, artists and farmers, all sharing images of their common passion - British-grown…

Zany Zinnias!

Zinnia varieties come in deliciously fruity shades Image: Canva I'm an unabashed lover of zinnias. There is something about the luminosity of their colours and their unique shape - a ruff of stiff petals surrounding a central cone which is crowned with star-shaped golden florets - which I find…

A new season at my allotment

A new season in a new growing year. Spring, my favourite time of year.This will be my sixth season at my allotment in Southampton. It is eleven rods long, quite a big plot. I decided to section everything up with raised beds; it has no grass but wood chip paths. After the storms and wet weather the…

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