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The quickest way to plant up a new garden

Are you planting up a new garden and don’t know where to start? I would recommend garden shrubs as a starting point. By selecting more compact varieties, and those which are easier to prune and tame, you can make life easier for yourself! A garden which only includes bedding plants is a blaze…

Wisteria masterclass: best expert content

Wisteria flowers are highly scented and look fantastic trailing en masseImage: Wisteria floribunda Domino' from Thompson & Morgan Find everything you need to grow fabulous wisteria here. From troubleshooting flowering issues to keeping these vigorous climbers under control with correct pruning…

A Life in the Garden of....Suffolk businessman, Jeremy Scowsill

Ipswich-based property developer doubles as self-sufficient organic gardener Isn't it funny how, at a certain age, you realise that many of the people you've known for years have apparently 'suddenly' got into gardening? I'm not sure if it's actually an age thing - it clearly isn't as the growing…

Grow your own meals - these 11 Instagrammers will show you how

These Instagrammers provide plenty of new serving suggestions for homegrown produceImage: Markus Spiske on Unsplash Food delivered straight from plot to plate is the freshest, healthiest and most delicious food you'll ever eat. With an allotment, veg patch, or even just a couple of window boxes,…

Best flowering hedges

Guelder Rose hedging has beautiful flowers in the spring, and vibrant red berries in the autumn Image: Guelder Rose (Hedging) from Thompson & Morgan Hedges are generally viewed as practical but dull garden workhorses, marking boundaries and screening ugly vistas or providing a plain backdrop to…

Customer trial panel member profile – Corinne Brown

Corinne BrownI’m Corinne Brown, a 61year old retired geography teacher. I have been fortunate to have had a garden to play in all my childhood and a garden to tend all my married life (ruby wedding this summer). My husband is the grass cutter, hedge trimmer and maintenance man whilst I am the…

Customer trial panel member Geoff Stonebanks

In this gardening blog post Geoff Stonebanks writes about his gardening experiences on the south coast of England and becoming a member of Thompson & Morgan’s customer trial panel.I’m Geoff Stonebanks, fast approaching my 60th birthday and retired now with my garden in Sussex for 9…

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…

How to create beautiful displays with annual flowers

Nigella damascena provides a beautiful display all summer longImage source: Shutterstock Once March arrives, Nic Wilson's potting shed is launched into action as her annual flower seeds come out. Here, the experienced gardener behind dogwooddays talks to us about the many roles that annual flowers…

Rewilding the lawn

This white tailed bumble bee is enjoying selfheal flowers which have spontaneously popped up in an unmown lawn Image: Plantlife Which would you choose? A barren desert wasteland? Or a tapestry of wild flowers teaming with insects, mammals and birds? Lawns are great for leisure and as a foil to…

Blogs to inspire you to grow your own

Beginner or experienced veg grower? Sharing tips helps produce bumper cropsImage: Shutterstock Food you grow yourself is fresh, healthy, and nutritious, but if you're new to gardening, it's not always easy to know where to start. If you're wondering whether you have the space or the knowhow to grow…

GYO & BYO: Grow Your Own & Blitz Your Own

Green smoothies are packed with leafy greens that offer a range of health benefits, including being full of antioxidants and vitamins, boosting your immune system and helping to improve digestion. Many of the most popular ingredients of healthy green smoothies are vegetables and herbs that can be…

Flaming June in Pembrokeshire

Hello Gardening Friends, For the first time in many years Pembrokeshire is experiencing an actual "Flaming June!" With temperatures exceeding 25c most days and sticky 18c nights, it's been mostly impossible to garden. The water butt has been emptied days ago, and for now we are using our "Grey…

The minty fresh taste of summer

Chocolate Mint is one of the more interesting varietiesImage source: Nic Wilson Mint is the most versatile of herbs - it adds zest to summer desserts and savoury dishes, and flavours herbal teas and cocktails. It thrives in semi-shade where other Mediterranean herbs like thyme and rosemary might…

Messy Job, This Gardening Lark

Autumn colour came late this year, and puff, it was gone, leaving chaos and disorder in its wake. Now I'm a bit fussy about tidiness, not the best character trait for a gardener. And I'm not a fan of formal or minimalist gardens, preferring the organised chaos of more naturalistic schemes. This…

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…

Winter hanging baskets - planting ideas

Red berries look glorious against a variegated silver leaf for the winter seasonImage: dogwooddays Once the last of summer's flowers have faded, it's tempting to discard the plants, store the baskets behind the shed, and give up until spring. But that would be to miss out on the colour, texture and…

Weaving the Garden Tapestry

There can be much more to a beautiful garden than masses of flowers. Although a 'sea of colour' border is spectacular it may be fleeting in beauty, and can lack definition through the seasons if it has no underlying form or structure. Putting together the shape and outline of different types of…

Basil bonanza

Discover how to cultivate this fast-growing annual Image: isak55 Early summer is the ideal time to sow basil seeds for late summer pizzas, salads and pasta dishes. In fact, professional garden designer Nic Wilson of dogwooddays says one of her favourite jobs of the year is collecting armfuls of…

Genuinely romantic men grow their own cut flowers

Win a place on a course at the Kitchen Garden School. See below for detailsLast month a branch with a very early blossom on it broke off one of the ornamental cherry trees in the main garden I watched my husband from the warmth of the house take a pair of secateurs and cut the lonely fallen branch…

Top 10 evergreen shrubs

Top 10 Evergreen ShrubsEvergreen shrubs provide permanent structure in the garden and all-year-round interest. Some have beautiful flower displays or are highly scented in winter when little else is growing, and some have variegated or colourful foliage which is a perfect foil for summer perennials…

Top 10 best-selling plants of 2018

This pretty hydrangea won the nation's hearts and Chelsea's Plant of the Year 2018Image: Hydrangea Runaway Bride' by Thompson & Morgan Are you looking for some garden inspiration? Or just curious about which plants were gardeners' favourites last year? Here are our ten best-selling plants of…

Gardening is a waiting game

Gardening isn’t one of those hobbies that we can just roll out of bed and do such as running or dancing. It requires a considerable amount of time to carefully plan what to sow and when. Therefore, gardening is a bit of a waiting game, and sometimes our patience is put to the test, but the…

Are you feeling the Love yet?

I'm just not feeling the love! Apart from sloping off to the greenhouse every few days to check on the cuttings (progress not great. ) I've done nothing NOTHING, I TELL YOU! Oh the guilt! I've come up with every excuse: it's too wet, too cold, too early, too late. Apart from one manic flurry of…

....And It Was All Going Snow Well!

So I wasn't far out about snowfall on Feb 20th, wasn't I? I had a bad feeling.... . BUT NOT THIS BAD! Would you believe it, yesterday I was on the allotment pruning the blackberry hedge in my shirt sleeves and today I'm back in my thermals! I'm not sure my nerves can stand it! During the first…

A great way to grow herbs – the windowsill gardener

Now I’m not a drinking person. But the people I live with do like the occasional bottle of wine, so when I went outside the other day and found the glass recycling box was rather full, I decided to do some recycling of my own.I wanted something that would look neat and tidy but at the same…

Buddleja – the new patio plant?

Purple Leaf Blackthorn shares her Suffolk garden, on a rural windswept site, with chatty cats, free-range chickens and ducks as well as a rich local fauna of birds, rabbits, rats, moorhens and deer.  With a focus on diversity, scent and colour – foliage or flower, whilst competing with the…

Top ten wildflowers

Ox-eye daisies are easy to grow and very popular with pollinatorsImage: Ox-Eye Daisy from Thompson & Morgan Wildflowers are a low-maintenance and long-lasting addition to any garden. Often planted as annual or perennial meadows, they make a wildlife-friendly alternative to lawns or a quick and…

Top 10 winter bedding plants

Top 10 winter bedding plantsAs summer draws to an end it’s an ideal time to be thinking about winter bedding plants for cheerful colour during the coldest months of the year! Winter bedding plants are biennial or perennial plants which are planted in the autumn, some flowering throughout the…

January....

Hello Gardeners, I can't quite believe this will be my fourth year writing for T&M. I have learned so much more about writing blogs as well as gardening over the years. I've shared my ups and downs with you, and formed many friendships with the blogging community. One of things I love is your…

A February full of drama

Hi Everyone, February might be the shortest month, but boy has it been packed with drama - at least for me anyway. First we had the wicked west winds so bitter they could have given an expresso a run for its money. These annoying gusts meant for several days we couldn't go in the greenhouses for…

Gardening memories of 2012

Gardening memories of 20122012 was full of gardening memories, not least because of the almost never-ending rain and lack of sunshine. A while ago we asked our Twitter followers and Facebook fans to tweet and post their most memorable moments and got some great comments. We thought we’d turn…

New plants arrived, but the weather’s too bad to plant them up!

My new strawberry runners (Flamenco, chosen by my 7-year old daughter) arrived at the end of last week and I had hoped to get out into the garden to plant them. Ha! No such luck – a few inches of snow put paid to that idea. We got off quite lightly snow-wise compared to other parts of the…

How I got into gardening, part 1

Michael Perry, New Product ManagerEveryone always asks me what got me into gardening… and the answer is my grandparents!My first bleary memories are of my grandparents’ vast greenhouses, their endless complex of sheds filled with garden tools and, of course, pots and borders lovingly…

Crops for a cool climate

Crops for a Cool ClimateOver the years in which climate change has been discussed in the media, there have been continual suggestions that it will be of benefit to gardeners – allowing us to grow fruit and vegetable crops that enjoy the continental climate, but fail to thrive in a traditional…

The Best Hedges for Clay Soil

Viburnum is just one of many shrubs which thrive in moist clay soil and which make excellent candidates for hedgingIf you are selecting hedges for clay soil, here is an introduction to some of the best available, plus an A-Z list of other species to choose from. Clay soils demand tough plants which…

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