Harry Cook – wildflower planting in our area

Update 30th July – see photos at the end of this post!

Harry Cook, Thompson & Morgan trial panel member, and his wife Pat are members of It’s Your Neighbourhood with Loughborough in Bloom and look after the area called ‘The Green Belt’ around their house. Here Harry writes about the wildflowers that they’ve been planting.

Harry Cook - wildflower planting in our area

Wildflower planting in The Green Belt

Last year was the year of the wildflowers for Britain In Bloom and Charnwood Borough Council ‘Green Spaces Access To Nature’ planted up large areas of wildflowers around the town. These areas were sprayed with a specifically-targeted non-residual weed killer and then rotavated. Voluntary groups then sowed the seeds and raked them in  – we had a wonderful display for the RHS judges to see. At the end of the year the plants were mown and left for the seeds to drop and then raked off.

Harry Cook - wildflower planting in our area

Planting wildflowers

The Green Belt area by our house also had areas sown with wildflowers last year. It was mown in autumn for the seeds to drop and in spring this year l over-sowed the area by slitting the ground with a Sisis pierce. This made it easy to sow the seeds, which l mixed with dry sand then raked in with as little ground disturbance as possible. All seeds are up and looking good. We have also planted foxgloves among the wildflowers and at the side a brook that runs through the park we have a large area of ransom (wild garlic) with lovely white flowers.

Harry Cook - wildflower planting in our area

Ransoms (wild garlic)

This is a list of the wildflowers and grass seeds used:

Yarrow
Common Knapweed
Wild Carrot
Lady’s Bedstraw
Field Scabious
Ox-eye Daisy
Bird’s-foot Trefoil
Ribwort Plantain
Cowslip
Self-heal
Meadow Buttercup
Bulbous Buttercup
Yellow Rattle
Common Sorrel
Corn Cockle
Common Bent
Crested Dog’s-tail
Slender creeping red fescue
Smaller Cat’s-tail

Harry Cook - wildflower planting in our area

Wildflowers doing nicely

 

Update 30th July 2013

As you can see, the wildflowers are doing very well…

 

Get your own wildflower meadow started using the top tips and variety specific guides at our dedicated wildflower hub page.

Spring-summer customer trials update – Caroline Broome

Caroline Broome has been busy growing dahlias, petunias, fuchsias and many other plants as part of our customer trial panel. Read on for her latest update.

In an email to Thompson & Morgan’s customer trials co-ordinator, she wrote “I know I keep on about the dahlias from 2012 but they have been even better this year, and commented on by visitors to our NGS Open Day last Sunday. The only ones that need staking are the lemon yellow and the ‘Trebbiano’.

Spring-summer customer trials update - Caroline Broome

Dahlias with planting pouches in the background

The fuchsia ‘Twist and Shout’ is adorable and having just come into flower has plenty of buds on it.

Spring-summer customer trials update - Caroline Broome

Fuchsia ‘Twist and Shout’

Petunia ‘Balcon Mixed’ have shown remarkable resilience in the baking heat and heavy showers, albeit they are protected by the part shade of the pergola. As with all petunias they are sticky but using the T&M snips to deadhead avoids contact. Lovely fragrance at dusk as well.

Spring-summer customer trials update - Caroline Broome

Balcon petunias

Foxglove ‘Illumination’ have been planted out into the borders, and although still quite small are holding up well to the extreme temperatures. I tried half with tomato collars and half without, and the results speak for themselves: not a single hole in the protected ones and nibbles on all the others. All six are now collared and I have bought another 6 collars so that I can try echinacea and lobelias next year with confidence. I had given up trying to grow them as they were eaten away over successive years by slugs and snails.

Apple Bramley Seedling is romping away in its pot on the patio. It is now sending out side branches. Great to be able to grow apples if you only have a balcony or patio garden.

Clematis Flammula, the nasturtium comparison seed trial, blueberry Pink Lemonade and anemone ‘Queen Charlotte’ are putting on a spurt and photos should be forthcoming soon. Even the two rainbow orchid ‘Epipactis Sabine’ bare roots are growing now!

Peppers, grasses and tomatoes still sulking but fingers crossed they will catch up.”

Thompson & Morgan supplies flower bulbs for ‘Spruce up Sproughton’

Thompson & Morgan was recently contacted to provide a number of flower bulbs for ‘Spruce up Sproughton’, a local community project.

The 6-month project to improve the safety and overall appearance of a Suffolk village underpass was completed this week, with help from the local police and council, school children and local businesses.

The underpass has been considered a problem area for many years, with local residents feeling unsafe when using it because of litter, fly-tipping, grafitti and other anti-social behaviour.

Initially the local police contacted Sproughton Primary School and local businesses to ask for help and ideas on how to improve the area. A street artist was employed to decorate the underpass with pictures of local landmarks and designs by year 6 pupils from the school.

The council cut back the verges at each end of the underpass and planted hundreds of flower bulbs including tulips and daffodils, which were supplied by Thompson & Morgan. Since the start of the project the police have increased their presence in the area and say that they have experienced no further problems.

Gardening news – acute oak decline, slugs devouring wildflowers

Snippets from this week’s gardening news stories…

Gardening news - acute oak decline, slugs devouring wildflowers

Big Butterfly Count

Big Butterfly Count

Butterflies’ dwindling numbers have been in the news a lot recently and we also posted a few articles on how to encourage butterflies into your garden. This week sees the start of the Big Butterfly Count, the world’s biggest survey of butterflies. All you need to do is visit the website, download a butterfly ID chart, find a sunny spot to sit in and count how many butterflies you see in 15 minutes. The survey runs from 20th July until 11th August and you can count butterflies as many times as you like and then submit your results online.

Gardening news - acute oak decline, slugs devouring wildflowers

Acute oak decline – be on the lookout

British trees threatened by deadly diseases

Ash dieback has dominated the news in recent months, but now oak trees are being affected by acute oak decline. The bark in the trunk of the tree develops cracks from which a dark, sticky fluid ‘bleeds’. Another symptom is a thin canopy (tree top), a sign that the tree may soon die. Scientists are currently researching the cause of the disease, which may be bacterial. It affects both mature species native to the British Isles, the pedunculate and the sessile oak, but it is as yet unknown whether other oak species will be affected.

Acute oak decline has already been recorded in thousands of trees throughout East Anglia, the Midlands and South East England. The Forestry Commission is asking members of the public to be on the lookout for signs of the disease and to report suspected cases, either via the tree alert form or the tree alert app.

If you’re not sure which tree is which, the Woodland Trust has a comprehensive guide, giving all the information you need to be able to identify them.

Gardening news - acute oak decline, slugs devouring wildflowers

Slugs – eating their way through wildflower meadows

Slugs causing havoc in wildflower meadows
Field slugs are the subject of recent research into their impact on hay meadow restoration at Newcastle University. Initial findings have shown that the field slug is particularly fond of red clover among others, an important plant in wildflower meadows because of its ability to fix nitrogen in the soil for the benefit of other plants around it. This is a bit of a blow to the recent campaigns to increase wildflower meadows in the UK, including the Coronation Meadows Initiative set up by HRH The Prince of Wales.

The study found that the slugs’ favourites were red clover, yarrow, creeping red fescue, Yorkshire fog, and rough-stalked meadow grass, many of which are being grown in wildflower and hay meadows up and down the country. Slug populations increased massively after last year’s wet summer and this year’s boggy spring, with gardeners facing a daily onslaught of the slimy critters.

There are several pest control methods, both chemical and natural. Beer traps and used coffee grounds offer some protection, organic and child and pet friendly slug pellets are available and very effective. Nematodes – microscopic organisms that are watered into the garden in spring and autumn – seek out any slugs living underground and kill them within 3 days and are completely safe for use around children and animals.

Head to our wildflower hub page to find sowing and growing tips, variety specific guides and our full range of wildflower seeds and plants.

Tulip ‘Cupcakes’ christened online

Tulip ‘Cupcakes’ christened online

Tweeter names world exclusive collection

Tulip ‘Cupcakes’ christened online

Tulip ‘Cupcakes’

A chance arrangement of tulips has led to the launch of an exclusive new mix by the UK’s most successful horticultural mail order company.

When Sarah King, one of Thompson & Morgan’s designers and a keen amateur photographer, was asked to take some photos of a new range of tulips for one of Thompson & Morgan’s catalogues, she was only too pleased to oblige. Having taken some pictures of each of the new varieties, she scooped them up and put them in a vase on the company’s reception desk.

‘I literally ‘plonked’ them in a vase’, says Sarah, ‘I didn’t want them to go to waste. They are so unusual and with their light fragrance, I thought they would make a perfect arrangement for our reception area’.

The arrangement caught the eye of Michael Perry, T&M’s new product manager, who recognised the potential for a fabulous new tulip collection. ‘We were going to offer the tulips individually to our customers, but having seen how stunning they looked together, we felt that a collection of ALL the varieties would really appeal to gardeners’.

The next challenge was to find a name for the stunning peony-flowered tulip collection. A picture of the tulip arrangement that Sarah had inadvertently created was posted on Thompson & Morgan’s Facebook page. After a hugely positive response, T&M followers on both Twitter and Facebook were asked to come up with a name for the new and exclusive tulip mix. Martine Ellison-Smith tweeted in with the winning name – ‘Cupcakes’.

The new collection with its newly-chosen name will feature in Thompson & Morgan’s latest Autumn Catalogue which is due out in late July. Tulip ‘Cupcakes’ will be available to gardeners for delivery later this year, but customers are advised to order early as T&M expects demand to be high.

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