Thompson & Morgan donates world’s most expensive pumpkin seed to Hyde Hall vegetable grower

Following a nationwide hunt to find a gardener brave enough to sow the world’s most expensive pumpkin seed, Thompson & Morgan has delivered a seed of the current world record-breaking pumpkin (2,323lb, grown by Beni Meier in 2014) to the vegetable garden at RHS Hyde Hall, Essex. The mail order seed and plant specialist paid a record £1,250 for the seed at auction at the World Pumpkin Commonwealth Conference earlier in the season, in a bid to boost UK pumpkin genetics and see a world record contender grown on UK shores for the first time.

Paul Hansord handing over the giant pumpkin seed to Matthew Oliver

Thompson & Morgan director Paul Hansord delivered the precious seed to RHS horticulturist, Matthew Oliver, on 13 April. Armed with a crib sheet of Thompson & Morgan’s tips for success he promptly set the seed into potting compost, eager to make a start on the giant undertaking. Adding to the pressure, all this was carried out in front of a film crew from BBC Inside Out East, who will be following his progress through the season. A full report will be aired on the BBC1 show in the build up to Halloween.

Fortunately Matthew already has some good experience under his belt. Hyde Hall has become renowned for its pumpkin patch in recent years. Around 60 varieties of pumpkins, squash and gourds are grown at the Chelmsford garden each year, with thousands of visitors attending events through autumn to see the produce on display.

Matthew said: “Our largest pumpkins always draw a crowd, so I have been concentrating more time and effort on growing giant specimens in recent years. In 2015 I produced a 530lb giant and I already had big plans for 2016. We’ve built a larger patch (150x40ft) giving me space to grow four giant plants. Soil conditions have been improved and so have the irrigation systems, wind shelter and feeding programmes have all been planned to encourage the heaviest fruits.”

Sanding down the seed coating for quicker germination

Growing outdoors, Matthew admits he is unlikely to break the world record, but has set a personal target around the 1,000lb mark, which would make his attempt the heaviest outdoor pumpkin ever grown in the UK. He also hopes his attempt will encourage others to try in the future. He said: “Outdoor growing is much more achievable for home gardeners, and once they see the results at Hyde Hall I hope others will take up the challenge in their own gardens and allotments. Pumpkins are such a rewarding hobby plant.”

Matthew now has until 8th October to grow the biggest possible specimen and get it to the UK official weigh in at the Autumn Pumpkin Festival, Royal Victoria Country Park, Netley, Southampton.
The pumpkin patch will be on show to all Hyde Hall garden visitors through the season.

Thompson & Morgan was swamped with requests to grow the seed. Impressed with the passion of many of the entrants, it has sent seeds from several other heavyweight pumpkins (1689-2008lb specimens) to five other interested growers: Joanne Jackson, Cheshire; Guy French, Essex; Anthony & Sally Pooley, Suffolk, George Richardson, County Durham, and Mr Hill, Cantubury

Kris Collins

Kris Collins works as Thompson & Morgan’s quality control manager, making sure customers new and old are kept up to date on the latest plant developments and company news via a wide range of media sources. He trained in London’s Royal Parks and has spent more than a decade writing for UK gardening publications before joining the team at Thompson & Morgan.

3 simple tips for bigger sweet peas

Left to their own devices sweet pea plants will work their way up their supports, going on to produce masses of colour and scent. However, with a few simple training tricks you can turn an every-day display into a real show-stopper!

My tips here will encourage the fastest growth and the biggest blooms on the longest stems. You can see the difference my training tricks bring about in the photo below.

Training difference in sweet peas.

Sweet Pea ‘Turquoise Lagoon’ in the left hand pot has been left to its own devices, while Sweet Pea ‘Eleanore Udall’ on the right has received some regular attention from me – and what a difference it makes. When I get home this evening I’ll have to add the next tier to the Tower Pot frame, it will be another couple of weeks before I have to do that for ‘Turquoise Lagoon’.

If you want the same results, simply carry out my three easy maintenance tips:

Remove side shoots: Check plants every few days for side shoot development. These divert energy away from the main stem, which delays flowering and reduces eventual flower size. Use snips or your thumb and forefinger to pinch out shoot growth as close to the main stem as possible.

Remove sideshoots

Remove tendrils: Sweet pea plants put a lot of energy into producing tendrils and latching on to available supports. Divert that energy back into the main stem by snipping off tendrils before they latch on to a support.

Remove tendrils

Tie in: With no tendrils to hold up stems you’ll have to provide an alternative. I use sweet pea rings to keep my stems in place. They are quick and easy to put around both stems and supports, with plenty of room left between them. Therefore, avoiding any stem damage, and the rings can be used again and again. It is so much easier to work with than fiddly twine or raffia.

Sweet pea rings

For more sweet pea growing tips, helpful gardening videos, and particular variety advice, head to our sweet peas hub page.

Kris Collins

Kris Collins works as Thompson & Morgan’s quality control manager, making sure customers new and old are kept up to date on the latest plant developments and company news via a wide range of media sources. He trained in London’s Royal Parks and has spent more than a decade writing for UK gardening publications before joining the team at Thompson & Morgan.

Shrubs are the stalwarts of the border- they last for years and years, fill gaps and offer decorative foliage AND flowering! And, what better place to start than Hydrangeas– one of the most versatile shrubs you can find, and I’m going to show how comprehensive the range is too! For care advice and planting pointers, check out our hydrangea hub page.

1. Hydrangea aspera ‘Hot Chocolate’

This Hydrangea gives a colour explosion in the garden right from the word go! The foliage is long, elegant and the same colour as your favourite chocolate bar! This foliage changes with every few weeks that passes; from chocolate-brown to deep green, and then it surprises you by transforming to the most delectable amber and golden shades! ‘Hot Chocolate’ is a robust hydrangea which really fills the borders, and even performs in poor soils!

Hydrangea ‘Hot Chocolate’ and Hydrangea ‘Endless Summer – Bloomstruck’

2. Hydrangea ‘Endless Summer’

If you really want maximum flower power from your Hydrangea shrubs, then ‘Endless Summer’ is a real breakthrough! Usually, a Hydrangea macrophylla will only flower on old wood, which means they set their flower buds for flowering in the previous summer. ‘Endless Summer’ not only does this, but it ALSO flowers on new wood, so you get a double whammy! Remember this type of Hydrangea (macrophylla) also gives different coloured blooms on different soils; expect blue on acid and pink on alkaline!

3. Hydrangea paniculata ‘Bobo’

This type of Hydrangea is a bit more woody than most, but with that comes extra hardiness, resilience and an easier pruning method! Hydrangea paniculata ‘Bobo’ is short, compact and makes a rounded, neat specimen for the border or pretty patio pots. The snowball flowerheads almost cover the plants throughout the summer, and gently turn to bubblegum pink as the season progresses!

Hydrangea ‘Bobo’ and Hydrangea ‘Miss Saori’

4. Hydrangea ‘Miss Saori’

Undoubtedly the star of the Chelsea Flower Show in 2014, ‘Miss Saori’ was the winner of Plant of the Year, thanks to its crystallized-effect, two-tone flowers, which look like mini tiaras! A strong-growing plant, where the flower colour is less affected by different soil types too, you know you’ll be enjoying the colour you were expecting!

5. Hydrangea ‘Ayesha’

This Hydrangea macrophylla has a distinctive appearance; with mophead blooms where each floret is curled like a piece of popcorn! An easy to grow shrub for sun or shade, great for small gardens or large patio containers! Enjoy pink blooms on alkaline, blue blooms on acid!

Hydrangea ‘Endless Summer – Blushing Bride’ and Hydrangea ‘Ayesha’

With the nation’s apparent obsession with gyms, healthy eating and trying to lose weight, have you considered just how much exercise that you can do carrying out the simplest of garden tasks. We all ache after a long session of hoeing, digging or weeding and that’s probably because we’ve used muscles that we don’t normally and, providing we’ve been sensible, and safe, then it has probably done us some good!

With just a few simple garden tools you can burn off the calories, tone up your body and at the same time, have a well tended, beautiful garden, be it flowers or vegetables. Here are a few ideas to get you started and all at a fraction of the price of a gym subscription!

Hand trowels and forks will tone up your triceps and biceps too when you are using these for planting and weeding your beds and borders.

Using Secateurs, Grass Shears and Pruning Saws is the best exercise you’ll get for strengthening your forearms, wear gloves though – no point pruning yourself too!

If you want to improve your chest muscles (pectorals and lats) then trim hedges and shrubs with a pair of shears and clip your lawn edges with edging shears too, although don’t take on too much at once as you will soon lose interest and won’t want to finish the job!

You can’t beat using Loppers in the garden for those tougher pruning jobs and it’s a great way of working out your biceps, although don’t be tempted to use them to cut thicker branches than they can handle, you won’t get a clean cut and you might well break them – use a pruning saw instead.

If you want to improve your legs then simply dig! Using a garden fork or spade to dig over larger areas, be it a vegetable plot or a large flower bed, will give you lots of exercise and will burn off loads of calories too. If you haven’t got a huge plot to dig over then try an edging blade to keep your lawn in shape.

Lastly, and by no means least, your back, the bit that holds everything in place, be careful with it, you can’t get a new one (yet!). We all know to lift heavy things with a straight back and bent knees etc but it is so easy to quickly bend over, grab something – and then hurt yourself! For more gentle working, use a rake on beds, or a lawn rake to pull out moss from your lawn or just a leaf rake to clear up mess in your garden.

Of course you can combine things when you use some tools, hoeing will use your back and arms, wheeling a barrow will work out your back and legs, trying to stretch whilst you are working will also help with flexibility and importantly, start slowly each time, allow your muscles to warm up before you tackle the bigger jobs. You wouldn’t leap into a heavy gym session without first warming up and you shouldn’t rush out into the garden for a hard day’s graft without warming up to it either. Maybe walk around the garden first and work out your plan of action – preferably with a cup of tea, shrug your shoulders a few times in a circular motion to loosen yourself up a bit – put the tea down first, and then start with the easier jobs first. Don’t try to do everything at once either, working a bit more the next day will help to loosen up those aching muscles rather than overdoing it. After all, “Loam wasn’t built in a day”!

Just to give you a rough idea of what working in the garden will help you achieve, below is a list of approximate calories per hour burned whilst performing some simple garden jobs, these are only rough figures that I’ve gleaned from the internet and will vary from to person:

Average calories burned per hour – based on a 10 stone person

Carrying heavy loads 490

Chopping logs quickly 1070

Collecting grass or leaves 250

Digging 320

Mowing lawn with a push-along mower 280

Mowing lawn with a ride-on mower 150

Planting seedlings/shrubs 250

Raking lawn 250

Shovelling 570

Pruning shrubs 280

Weeding 280

Above all else, remember that your garden is also to be enjoyed, it’s all very well spending loads of time on a gardening/exercising regime, but you’ve grown all your beautiful flowers for a reason – so take time to relax and enjoy it too!

Graham Ward

I’ve been gardening for as long as I can remember, my first earliest memory being planting seeds in my Grandfather’s prestige flower bed and having a prize lettuce growing there, which he proudly left to show everyone.

Since then, gaining knowledge and experience from both my Grandfather and my Father, I’ve continued to garden, both as a hobby and later on as a professional gardener and landscaper for 12 years. I love all aspects of it, from the design and build, to the planting out of summer borders with plants you’ve either grown from seed or raised from plugs. Unusual varieties always catch my eye and I’m keen to try growing them, even if sometimes it means learning from my mistakes.

At Thompson & Morgan we know our customers demand high quality with exceptional value, which is why we have worked hard to produce a range of products which exceeds the high standards our customers have come to expect from us.

We have awarded our ‘Grow the Best’ rosette to some of our highest performing plants.
Our horticulturalists and customer trial panel carried out extensive field tests and put the plants through their paces in a variety of environments. Once the testing is completed we are given a considerable amount of feedback from our customer trial panel which without, we could not guarantee our ‘Grow the Best’ varieties with such confidence.

Potato ‘Jazzy’ & Begonia ‘Inferno’™

With this confidence we are able to offer a DOUBLE your money back guarantee if you are unhappy with any of our ‘Grow the Best’ products.

In this range of ‘Grow the Best’ we have both flowers and vegetables, with our Potato ‘Jazzy’ providing enormous yields both in the ground and in potato bags. These really exceptional second early potatoes are full of flavour and have been awarded the RHS AGM for their fantastic garden performance.

Customer favourite Petunia ‘Frills and Spills’™ Mixed’, is grown in the British climate for the British climate which means these delightful fragrant double bloomed petunias are completely weather tolerant and resilient to whatever the British weather can throw at them. The blooms are larger than normal petunia blooms, so when they cascade over the side of window boxes or hanging baskets they will provide a stunning summer display.

Fuchsia Giant Collection & Fuchsia ‘Bella Collection’

We have three varieties of fuchsias in our ‘Grow the Best’ range, the Fuchsia ‘Giant Collection’ which is our best value fuchsia. With giant frilled blooms which can flower up to 10cm (4”) across these eye-catching fuchsias will fill baskets and containers and last right through summer. Fuchsia ‘Bella Collection’ includes a range of five different varieties with some upright and bushy and others ideal for cascading; making these beautiful fuchsias perfect for almost any type of container. Our final fuchsia in this exceptional range is Fuchsia ‘Pink Fizz’ which produces in excess of 2,000 blooms from the beginning of summer right through until November. Outlasting almost everything else in the summer garden, this hardy shrub can tolerate temperatures down to -10C (14F), which means it can be planted to cover unsightly walls or frames and will perform better and better year after year.

Fuchsia ‘Pink Fizz’

Out of all the begonias we produce, Begonia ‘Inferno’™ is one of our customer favourites. Bred to perform whatever the weather it offers colour, vigour and unstoppable flower power! Perfect for low maintenance gardens and fast growing, this is one for those who don’t have much time but still want to enjoy an awesome display.

Why not peruse the ‘Grow the Best’ range as we are sure you will find plenty of the varieties are already your favourites.

Wendie Alexander

I have worked for Thompson & Morgan for nearly four years. In that time I have learnt lots about gardening, but consider myself very much a novice. I have started growing veg on a colleague’s allotment and also growing windowsill seeds such as Salad Leaves and Rocket. I love gaining more knowledge about horticulture and am lucky enough to work here.

As a Royal Academy exhibition examines the role gardens have played in art history, with Monet masterpieces as the starting point, Thompson & Morgan reveals its historic link with the world famous artist, his gardens and paintings.

Claude Monet Summer Garden

Best known by the general public for his Impressionist paintings, it is less well known that Claude Monet first designed, planted and tended his iconic garden scenes before setting them to canvas. Monet’s natural flair for garden design and his artist’s eye led to harmonious colour planting and distinct design principles in his garden at Giverny, Normandy, that have inspired gardeners around the world ever since.

But where did Monet get his inspiration? Something of a ‘seedaholic’, Monet was famed for poring over the latest seed catalogues of the day, seeking out the latest introductions to try out in his flower and vegetable gardens before immortalising them in paint.

In their book ‘Monet’s Palate Cookbook’ Aileen Bordman & Derek Fell note that: “Monet always delighted at the arrival of the new season’s seed catalogs. He would study the new varieties and decide what to order…… from foreign sources, such as Thompson & Morgan in England (a company that sold seeds to Charles Darwin). He would often order new varieties to evaluate against his traditional selections and invite comments from his family and friends.”

Thompson & Morgan trial ground

But his inspiration didn’t just come from catalogues – in his day, gardeners relied on text alone – there was no glossy plant photography in the Thompson & Morgan catalogues of the time, and it is well documented that he travelled to Suffolk to view the Thompson & Morgan trial fields. This ‘living catalogue’ inspired many of the planting combinations still seen today at Giverny.

Flowers with fluttery petals were a Monet favourite, and he used them widely in the gardens to re-create the iconic ‘Impressionist shimmer’ present in his paintings. Thompson & Morgan poppies (annual, perennial and Californian), nasturtiums, pansies, dahlias, cosmos and pelargoniums, among many others, made their way into his planting schemes, cultivars of which are still used today in the gardens at Giverny.

Tree Lily ‘Monet’

It wasn’t a one way relationship either. Thompson & Morgan took on an oriental poppy hybridised by Monet’s son. Named Papaver orientale ‘Claude Monet’, it was a popular variety in the early 20^th Century, sadly it has since been lost to cultivation.

Links to this relationship still exist in today’s modern offering from Thompson & Morgan. The seed and young plant specialist has carved a niche in recent years with towering Tree Lilies – the star performer in the collection is Tree Lily ‘Monet’ (3 bulbs £11.99).

Even today the gardens at Giverny shout exuberance, but many of the elements in Monet’s planting schemes can be created with just a few packets of easy to sow seeds. If you’re looking to make a big impression on a small budget, Thompson & Morgan has all you need to get the Giverny look this summer.

Get the Monet look in your garden with Thompson & Morgan:

Claude Monet’s Summer Garden

Grande Allee (Arbour-covered gravel pathway): If you have a gravel path, create your own Grande Allee by planting Nasturtium ‘Crimson Emperor’ (30 seeds £2.39) along the path edges. Allow it to scramble over the stones to get the Giverny look. In autumn plant with tulips and peonies for a spring display.

Monet’s summer island beds: Create Monet’s tiered island beds by underplanting a standard pink or white rose (£11.99) with red bedding geraniums such as ‘Best Red’ F1 (30 garden Ready plants for £14.00), then edge the display with Dianthus ‘Scented Pink Peony’ (10 postiplugs (£17.99)

Monet’s Arbours: Pair Morning Glory ‘Heavenly Blue’ (50 seeds £2.69) with Nasturtium ‘Climbing Mixed’ (40 seeds £2.29) for a floral arch of blue, orange and yellow.

Pair Clematis jackmanii (3litre potted plant £14.99) with red flowering climbing rose ‘Paul’s Scarlet’ (2 bare root plants £14.99)

Monet’s late summer border :

Claude Monet late summer garden

Orange Dahlia ‘Motto’ (5 tubers 13.99), perennial sunflower – Helianthus x laetifolia (25 seeds £2.49), Aster ‘Composition’ (60 seeds £2.99), Cosmos ‘Xanthos’ (30 seeds £2.49, 25 plug plants £11.99), Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’ (100 seeds £2.99), Marigold ‘Zenith Mixed’ (40 seeds £2.49), blue Salvia patens (15 seeds 99p), Ageratum ‘Blue Danube’ (100 seeds £3.39)

Dahlia Orange’ Motto’, Cosmos ‘Xanthos’ & Rudbeckia ‘Goldstrum’

Monet Containers:

Oriental pot: Yellow Gladioli ‘Limoncello’ and orange ‘Brown Sugar’ (10 corms £9.99) surrounded by Nasturtium ‘Tom Thumb’ (40 seeds £2.29)

Half barrel hydrangea: Hydrangea ‘Blue Danube’ (3.5litre potted plant £1o.99) underplanted with Gypsophila ‘Gypsy’ (50 seeds £3.29).

Seed varieties are available online and at garden centres. Plant material available from www.thompson-morgan.com

Painting the modern garden: Monet to Matisse runs until 20^th April at the Royal Academy, London.
See www.royalacademy.org.uk for details

To visit Monet’s garden see www.giverny.org

Kris Collins

Kris Collins works as Thompson & Morgan’s quality control manager, making sure customers new and old are kept up to date on the latest plant developments and company news via a wide range of media sources. He trained in London’s Royal Parks and has spent more than a decade writing for UK gardening publications before joining the team at Thompson & Morgan.