RHS Award of Garden Merit Vegetables

Closeup of Swiss Chard ‘Bright Lights’ from Thompson & Morgan

Choose AGM winning vegetables for sturdy performance
Image: Swiss Chard ‘Bright Lights’ from Thompson & Morgan

Royal Horticultural Society ‘Award of Garden Merit’ winning vegetable plants have earned a seal of approval for reliability. If you’re looking for tried and tested fruit and veg to grow at home, this certification points you towards the very best varieties to grow. There are currently 7,500 plants with an AGM, including ornamental and edible plants. New awards are made each year, and current award holders are reviewed regularly to make sure they’re still up to scratch. To help you narrow the list, here are some of our customers’ favourite AGM varieties to get you off to a flying start. (more…)

Fantastic foliage: 18 plants to green your garden

Collection of different foliage in garden

Foliage adds structure, depth and interest to any garden planting scheme
Image: Shutterstock

Foliage gives your garden all year-round interest. Not only does it fill the gaps between flowers, it’s a good way to add vibrancy to shady areas. We’ve chosen 18 of our favourite plants including conifers, herbaceous perennials and evergreen shrubs to provide all the interesting foliage you could possibly wish for. Some of these shrubs produce flowers and berries as well!

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Rise of the bedding plants

Begonia semperflorens ‘Organdy Mixed’ F1 Hybrid from Thompson & Morgan

Fill your beds and borders with show stopping bedding plants
Image: Begonia semperflorens ‘Organdy Mixed’ F1 Hybrid from Thompson & Morgan

Bedding plants became incredibly popular in the Victorian era, when specialist plant hunters were dispatched to find new and unique specimens to add colour and interest to gardens. The surge in interest coincided with the abolition of the glass tax. This meant that, for the first time, more people were able to erect modest glasshouses in their gardens allowing them to grow a wider range of the new bedding plants that were brought back from warmer parts of the world. Here’s why this Victorian status symbol has stood the test of time…

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The top 10 fuchsias to enhance your outdoor space

Fuchsia Trailing Pre-Planted Basket from Thompson & Morgan

Trailing fuchsias look fantastic cascading from hanging baskets and window boxes
Copyright: Visions BV, Netherlands

Fuchsia plants are versatile, hard working, and easy to grow anywhere in the garden. Plant up hanging baskets and window boxes with trailing varieties or choose bushier hardy types to fill your garden borders. There’s a great variety of sizes and shapes to explore, all with long-lasting flowers sure to brighten up your outdoor space.

Here are 10 of our all-time favourite fuchsia plants, chosen for their fabulous flower performance and great garden value.

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Our 2015 Highlights

Well, what a year it has been for us at Thompson & Morgan. Each year is never complete without its ups and downs, and we really wouldn’t have it any other way. Spring in particular is our busiest time of year, but it is also the most valuable for us as a business. We learn about areas which we need to improve on and your feedback is incredibly valuable to us, good or bad. You, our valued customers, help us to offer you a fantastic service. That aside, I just wanted to go back to a few funny, emotional, hard, but most importantly memorable times we have had over the past year.

 

Fuchsia Festival

Fuchisa Festival2015 was the year of the fuchsia where we celebrated this much loved garden favourite with the Fuchsia Festival. We had a calendar of online activities including top growing advice from our experts, exciting blogs from customers and staff and on top of that, we added a further 20 new fuchsia varieties to our online range.




Chelsea centrepiece fit for a Queen

Chelsea Flower ShowDid you read about this in the news? This year, there was a chance that Her Majesty The Queen was going to visit the Fresh gardens at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, but there was a gaping hole where the centre piece was meant to be. The team at Fernando Gonzalez Garden Design was missing its’ star plant when UK stocks of our Digitalis ‘Illumination Apricot’ failed to flower in time for display in the Pure Land Foundation Garden.

We stepped in to widen the search, calling on growers across Europe. Plants in perfect bloom were quickly tracked down at a nursery outside Barcelona, Spain, more than 1,500km from us. Without hesitation, I embarked on a 3,000km round trip to collect the plants and ensure they were safely in the garden at the time of build. For more info take a read about my mad dash (includes security checks with a large box of plants, broken fixtures on the plane and plant selfies!)

Not forgetting the potato exhibit we sponsored at Chelsea that won gold – the first ever potato display to win gold at Chelsea in the shows 150 year history.

 

Brightening up Suffolk Stations

Aiming to brighten the daily commute for Ipswich locals, we decorated train stations around Suffolk with 24 large hanging baskets filled with our customer favourite Begonia ‘Apricot Shades’.

We teamed up with Activgardens to get the baskets ready for their display back in June, donating all the plants, baskets, compost and feed needed to get the job done. The local charity, part of ActivLives, operates in the walled garden at Chantry Park, stepped up to the mark and grew magnificent baskets. We had tweets coming in from all around Suffolk, showing us the view of our baskets during their commute.

 

A fool too far?

Every year we try to come up with our best fool yet, and this year I think we managed just that! We created the Bridge in Bloom, 160 hanging baskets were set along each side of the Orwell Bridge in Ipswich, creating two 1,237m swathes of spring colour above the River Orwell.

Orwell Bridge in bloom

One customer said;

April-fools

We all wished it was real, what a magnificent sight that would be!

 

Thompson & Morgan trials at Jimmys Farm

In previous years, our Thompson & Morgan open day drew thousands of keen gardeners to our trial grounds here in Ipswich. Unfortunately, due to the large number of attendants and health & safety, we could no longer hold them on site. This year, we were able to team up with Jimmy’s Farm to showcase our magnificent trials to customers once again.

Trials

Over a thousand containers and many large flower beds injected colour to the activities at the farm, and the garden was open for free for customers to enjoy all week throughout summer. When it was time for Jimmy’s annual beer and sausage festival, we didn’t want to close the garden. So up stepped numerous T&M employees to man the garden to make sure those happy festival gooers could enjoy the display safely.

 

Expanded our range of garden supplies

2015 saw the launch of our range of gardening equipment, furniture and accessories. Look out for this range to expand in 2016! From garden furniture and greenhouses to pest control and garden tools, our range includes everything you need to grow, maintain and enjoy your garden. Can’t find what you are looking for? Then let us know and we will try our best to stock it!

 

Thrive listed as charity of the year

ThriveWe were so delighted to announce this year that Thrive are our charity of the year. Thrive is the UK’s leading charity using gardening to help bring positivity to the lives of those who have a physical or mental disability. The dedicated staff and volunteers at Thrive, provide much needed support and respite for those that need it most.

Thrive Sweet Pea ‘Eleanore Udall’ has been launched to raise money for this incredible charity. Thrives supporters named this Sweet Pea to commemorate the late wife of the founder of Thrive, the late Rev. Dr Geoffrey Udall and we couldn’t have thought of a name better suited.

So please, get buying and sowing and not only will you be supporting this amazing charity, but you will be creating incredible displays in your garden for all to enjoy.

 

Finalist for website of the year

The Garden Media Guild awards are a much anticipated awards ceremony for any keen gardener and the horticultural trade. Sporting their suits and ties, our horticulturists Kris Collins and Michael Perry attended the event held in London, which also provided the opportunity to meet with some of the Thrive team.

This year, we were a finalist for Website of the Year, which is just amazing. We work endlessly to improve our website to provide you with top quality plants and a great experience, and I cannot tell you how much this means to us! Maybe next year, just maybe, we will be top!

 

Egg & Chips

Egg & ChipsFollowing the success of our 2-in-1 Tomtato ®, we excitingly launched Egg & Chips ™. This grafted plant provides Aubergines AND potatoes from the same plant, perfect for patio and balcony pots. The best part, the grafting process makes it easier to grow aubergines in the UK climate. The hardy, vigorous potato plant supports the more delicate aubergine far better than its own root system can in British soil, enabling optimum fruit production. You won’t even need a greenhouse to grow Egg & Chips™ !

 

There have been so many memories that I could share with you but this blog would become more of a report! Today is my last day Thompson & Morgan, it has been great to be able to reminisce on the past year and it has been a joy to be a part of. Wishing you all the very best for 2016.

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