After all the buzz of setting up, last minute polishing and- for some- the clinking of champagne glasses, Chelsea Flower Show exhibitors can now sit back and rest… well almost! Let’s hope the plants can last another day; the unprecedented hot weather this week has given many exhibitors sleepless nights, as they struggle to keep their displays in dazzling form! So here is The Chelsea Roundup.
It’s the day after my visit to Chelsea Flower Show! My feet are still aching, and my mind is still spinning with new plants and fresh garden designs. The whole of the gardening world tends to be at Chelsea too, so it can be difficult to walk a few feet without seeing someone you know! I think I’ll need 2 days next time!
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2014 runs from 20 – 24 May. You cannot deny that the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is the pinnacle of any horticultural calendar. Although it can divide public opinion with some of the garden designs, the event is a fantastic showcase for new plants, undiscovered plants and old favourites!
Geranium ‘T&M’s Choice Mixed’
Young plants – what’s all the fuss about?
The world has changed so much over the last 20 years and we seem to have less and less leisure time. Thankfully, the gardening world has changed as well. And, now, customers looking for a fast-track way of growing can buy a whole range of young plants, delivered to your door, and in a much wider range than you’d find in any garden centre!
Thompson & Morgan takes the difficult bit out of growing… the germination. It’s something that often requires tricky conditions, consistent temperatures, and time and patience.
We do all the germinating for you, raising our young plants in module trays of various sizes, and then pack them so they’re delivered to your door in tip-top condition!
Fuchsia ‘Giants Collection’
We pride ourselves on being able to offer varieties with garden performance, rather than “pack” performance. Varieties that look pristine and are in flower in the garden centre or DIY store often fail when planted into the garden – they simply run of steam. However, our varieties will perform all through the season, and in colours and mixes the shops just don’t bother to sell.
Browse our range of plants and you’ll see what I mean. Any young plants can be grown on the windowsill too – it’s not about having a greenhouse or conservatory. If you really want to get growing, you can always set up a table in a well-lit back bedroom. All the plants need is light and warmth!
Busy Lizzie ‘Divine T&M’s Choice’
So, what you waiting for?!
It’s a busy time for us at Thompson & Morgan, here’s a taster of a typical week at work for me!
Monday
After a few days off, it’s back in fresh and early for a varied week of meetings, product research and catalogue preparations.
Today I meet with Sarah, our trials manager, to discuss how we can enhance our customer trials programme. This is a project we’ve been running for 3 years now, and it involves sending our products to a selected group of customers and asking them what they think of them. We get some very good, honest comments and some photography which is almost as good as our own!
Sarah and I also chat through which plants we’re going to grow to enter for Plant of the Year at Chelsea Flower Show. This is a very tricky project as the plants have to be grown out of season, which means they’ll need extra warmth and lights. We draw up a shortlist which we’ll then run past Paul Hansord, our horticultural director, as soon as we can, as we’ll soon need to start taking cuttings! In 2012, we WON Plant of the Year for our innovative Foxglove ‘Illumination Pink’. Bred by our amazing plant breeder, Charles Valin, this is a ‘futuristic foxglove’, which flowers much longer than older types and is in exotic colours never, ever seen before!
The monster pumpkin – can you guess how many seeds are in it?
Tuesday
It’s the week of Halloween, so today I make sure we’ve given our ‘count the seeds in the pumpkin’ competition the push it needs, which means updating and scheduling my social media accounts, and also setting the dates of the seed count into my diary, just so we don’t forget! I also notice that the Great British Garden Revival information is starting to leak through social media. This is a programme that was filmed at our trials site during the summer, and I should be featuring in the ‘bedding’ episode. It’s a new series, designed to make gardening a bit trendy again. We don’t have definite broadcast dates yet, but we’ll let you know as soon as we do.
Filming at our trials site
Wednesday
This week is one of the last weeks before the big spring plant catalogue goes to the printers, so I’m working closely with the catalogue team to make sure they have everything they need from me for the new products. There are about 70 products, so this has been a lot of work over the last few months; speaking to suppliers, assessing trials, instructing photography (with our new photographer, Helen Freeman), writing copy notes, working out the main selling points and so on. We have some EXCELLENT new products – I won’t give too much away, but imagine a ‘blue’ carnation and an azalea-flowered geranium for starters…
Thursday
Lots of catching up on e-mails today, there’s always so much going on, product development never seems to stop, and sometimes I could be talking to suppliers about products that might be 15 or 20 years away! It took us 15 years to develop the TomTato®, which you may have seen recently, it’s a plant which produces tomatoes AND potatoes. The plants are simply grafted together – it’s not a new concept, but we are the first company to make a large amount of plants and to marry up a high quality, sweet tomato with a good cropping white potato.
Friday
Some of today is spent preparing for Saturday’s QVC show. We regularly sell our plants through this shopping channel on TV, and I’m a brand ambassador for Thompson & Morgan on the show. This week it’s a gift show and we’re selling a Christmas tree! I make sure we get some good photos of me lifting it (it was heavy!), and working with Sarah Dodsworth from the QVC team, we agree on the main selling points, and also source some photos of bad Christmas trees. This will all help make the sell stronger; our Christmas tree is the no-drop, no-flop tree, one of the highest quality money can buy. I try to get to bed early, so I can get up at 5am (yuk) to travel down to Chiswick for the show.
It’s really heavy!