Chelsea Flower Show entries – another Plant of the Year award for Thompson & Morgan?
Rebecca works in the Marketing department as part of the busy web team, focusing on updating the UK news and blog pages and Thompson & Morgan’s international website. Rebecca enjoys gardening and learning about flowers and growing vegetables with her young daughter.
The most beautiful flowers have a humble start, like these petunia plugs.
Image: Ian Grainger / Shutterstock
Fill your garden with colour the convenient and easy way with plug plants. Although seeds are cheaper to buy, there’s often a lot of work involved, from germination to pricking out tiny seedlings. Cuttings also pose the same problem, requiring nurturing undercover for some time and with varying degrees of success. When you buy plug plants, you bypass this difficult stage of growth and receive strong, healthy young plants, raring to grow once potted up or planted into their final positions.
There are plenty of plug plants to choose from but if you need some inspiration take a look at our pick of top ten plug plants for a quick, easy and reliable display. See our How we grow and send your plants page for more information about our plug plant sizes.
Begonia
Begonias are slow and tricky to raise from seed and Begonia tubers can be expensive if you have lots of space to fill. Begonia plug plants are an easy and economical way of growing Begonias and will quickly fill your containers and baskets with colour! Smaller plug plants are best potted up and grown on but jumbo plugs or garden-ready plug plants can be planted straight into their final containers after all risk of frost has passed. Begonia plants are a fantastic addition to beds, borders, baskets, Flower Pouches® and just about any patio container you can think of! Producing a long-lasting display of bright and showy flowers, Begonia plants keep going until the first frosts.
Petunia
Petunias can be fiddly to raise from seed but Petunia plug plants are easy to grow on, giving a rewarding display in beds, containers, hanging baskets and Flower Pouches®. Trailing Petunia plants such as the Surfinia varieties are our most popular, but there are plenty of other unusual and eye-catching varieties available! These half-hardy annuals look spectacular spilling from hanging baskets and containers, or massed in flower beds where they will keep going all summer long until the first frosts.
Fuchsia
Fuchsias are an essential addition to summer hanging baskets and containers, and some varieties are hardy so can be enjoyed year after year. Fuchsia plants can be raised from cuttings but require over-wintering, taking time and space to look after. For quick results, Fuchsia plug plants are a much easier alternative and trailing Fuchsias can be planted straight into hanging baskets and containers without the need for potting up first. With trailing, climbing and upright varieties available in a mixture of colours, Fuchsias are a fantastic and easy-to-grow addition to beds, borders, hanging baskets, containers and Flower Pouches®.
Dianthus
Dianthus plants, also known as carnations, pinks and sweet Williams, can take a year to flower from seed so for quick and instant results try Dianthus plug plants. Once potted up, Dianthus plugs will quickly start to flower and will come back year after year! These hardy perennials and biennials are cottage garden essentials and perfect for the front of sunny borders where they add a profusion of colour and sweet fragrance. Dianthus flowers are also superb for cutting, lasting many weeks in a vase.
Geranium
Geranium plants are slow to grow from seed, requiring an early start and many months of nurturing to reach flowering size. As with Fuchsias, Geranium cuttings require over-wintering which takes up lots of space and time. Geranium plug plants are a much easier alternative – their strong growth will quickly fill out beds, hanging baskets and patio containers with clear, vibrant colour. With a range to choose from, including trailing, climbing, upright and unique rosebud varieties you’re sure to find a Pelargonium plant to suit your garden!
Pansies
Pansy plants and violas, their smaller relatives, give months of pleasure in beds, borders and containers. Winter-flowering pansies inject a welcome splash of colour when most other plants are dormant, making an invaluable addition to autumn, winter and spring container displays. Save yourself the hassle of growing pansies from seed and try growing pansy plug plants for a quick and easy display!
Wallflowers
Wallflower plants are a popular cottage garden favourite, valued for their fragrance and range of vibrant colours in the spring. Most often treated as biennials, wallflower seeds need sowing the year before you wish to have flowers, and the seedlings requiring nurturing and potting on through the hottest months of the year. Wallflower plug plants are an easy way to quickly fill your beds, borders and patio containers with low-maintenance colour, taking the hassle away from growing wallflowers from seed. Happy in even the poorest of soils, wallflowers are a versatile and undemanding addition to your garden!
Primrose
Primrose and Polyanthus plants are popular for their bright spring flowers – they’re so easy to grow and provide a reliable display from late winter through to late spring. Primrose plants take a year to flower from seed and the young plants require nurturing and potting on through the hottest months of the year. Primrose and polyanthus plug plants bypass this stage of growth and are a convenient way to fill your beds, borders and patio pots with an array of sparkling colours, often accompanied by a delicate sweet fragrance.
Lobelia
Lobelia plants are tiny when young and take a long time to reach flowering size. Buying Lobelia plug plants saves you the hassle of growing Lobelia from seed. These dainty flowers create a wonderful dense waterfall of colour, softening the edges of container displays and making great fillers in hanging baskets. Flowering all summer long they’re certainly worth adding to your patio displays or bedding schemes.
Tomatoes
Tomato plants are one of the most popular vegetable plants to grow, with crops being produced non-stop from mid-summer through until autumn, and with a taste far superior to supermarket tomatoes. We send our tomato plug plants at just the right stage of growth, ready for hardening off and planting out once all risk of frost has passed. With a range of bush and cordon varieties available you can grow tomatoes in greenhouses, vegetable beds, patio containers or even hanging baskets! Take a look at our How to grow tomatoes article for more growing information.
Rebecca works in the Marketing department as part of the busy web team, focusing on updating the UK news and blog pages and Thompson & Morgan’s international website. Rebecca enjoys gardening and learning about flowers and growing vegetables with her young daughter.
Corinne Brown
I’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 sower, planter, weeder and harvester.
Our garden is a larger than average suburban garden surrounded by hedges and fences. Its many features have changed throughout the 28 years we have lived here. But we have always had a large lawn for the children and now grandchildren to play on with their ball games, play equipment, tents etc. When the children were teenagers we had a large fish pond with beautiful water lilies and surrounded by bog plants. But that was soon filled in once grandchildren arrived. This area is now the strawberry patch full of raised beds and containers. As a working parent the flower beds were usually easy to look after perennials with self seeding annuals. Vegetables and fruit have been grown most years but as teachers we were often away for most of August just when the runner beans or strawberries should have been harvested. Now we are retired we can go away once the crops have been picked and we have more time to tend to a wider range of crops. Vegetables are grown along one side of the plot along with fruit bushes and trees. As a vegetarian for over 30 years I try to grow a range of fruits, vegetables and herbs. There is an old greenhouse that has been patched up with some new glass panes after a very windy night last January and a newer cold frame which is handy for growing salad crops and hardening off plants from the greenhouse. The patio is away from the house just next to the green house. It is a quiet sheltered spot for relaxing in, eating alfresco and looking out on to the garden and planning what to do next. The garden gives hours of pleasure.
Borders and lawn
I live in Chester-le-Street, a town in Co Durham. Here in the north-east of England most gardening challenges have come from the weather. The growing season is shorter compared with towns further south. I have learned not to plant out too soon and to wait for the soil to feel warm. However more recently we have had extremes of weather. Three winters ago the snow was very deep and slow to go and unfortunately rabbits from the nearby railway embankment came into the garden searching for food. They ate the bark around most of the apple, pear and plum trees causing the trees to die. We have since replaced the trees and added tree protectors.
One lucky aspect of our location is that we have not been affected by water shortages. Last year we had terrific floods and saw the lawn transform into a pond of water. Many people said the extra rain was damaging their crops but we found our flowers, lawn, runner beans, cabbages and strawberries thrived on the extra water. The garden is fortunate to have very fertile loamy soil. Apart from adding compost from two compost bins and rich leaf mould from the beech hedge we do not have to add fertiliser to our borders and beds. This helps us to garden in a sustainable way and provides us with organic fruit and vegetables.
Runner beans
Most of my inspiration for gardening ideas comes from looking at other people’s gardens when out walking. For example when exploring the Pennines last Summer I saw beautiful delicate red astrantia flowers in a cottage garden and now I have them growing in mine. At the moment I am growing tall purple Verbena from seed because it looked stunning in the flower beds at Alnwick Gardens.
Since joining the Thompson & Morgan customer trial panel I have been introduced to new challenges and ideas. Previously I have always grown flowers from seed but since trialling the plug plants I have discovered another way to overcome our shorter growing season. I have been amazed how quickly the tiniest plugs can grow into strong plants with flower buds in such a short time. Also containers and hanging baskets have seldom been on my gardening to do list because they usually were dead when we returned from our August holiday. But now my aim this summer is to make over my patio with a range of containers and hanging baskets.
Rebecca works in the Marketing department as part of the busy web team, focusing on updating the UK news and blog pages and Thompson & Morgan’s international website. Rebecca enjoys gardening and learning about flowers and growing vegetables with her young daughter.
Here is our round-up of this week’s gardening news and happenings in the gardening world.
Rebecca works in the Marketing department as part of the busy web team, focusing on updating the UK news and blog pages and Thompson & Morgan’s international website. Rebecca enjoys gardening and learning about flowers and growing vegetables with her young daughter.
Here is customer trial panel member Stephen Hackett’s profile – we’ll feature updates from his garden in the coming months.
Stephen Hackett
Inspirations
My earliest gardening memories are of helping my dad in his big gumboots, of running wild in my great aunt’s huge (or so it seemed to a small boy) garden in Hertfordshire, full of horseradish and apple trees, and of eating fresh redcurrants at my grandparents’ home in Yorkshire. The smell of warm, damp compost in the greenhouse takes me back to my Grandad Dickinson’s garden every time I slide open the door.
The thing that gets me most excited is a really good, big old-fashioned kitchen garden – Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk is my favourite.
Of people gardening today, Monty Don is the one who inspires me most: an excellent gardener, a fine writer, and organic to his fingertips. Dan Pearson is another gardener whose work I follow closely and Joy Larkcom is hard to beat on the vegetable side.
Experience
In my 20s I got interested in wildlife gardening (Chris Baines was my inspiration there) and in herbs. Since then I have gardened as a hobby for about 25 years, the last 17 of them here at our home in Salisbury.
In 2010 I retired from my career in education and took up gardening as a part-time job – alongside looking after my two small children and cooking good food for my hard-working wife – and I did an RHS Certificate at Sparsholt College in Hampshire. The gardens I work in are all private houses, along with a school, and they give me even more scope to develop new skills and experiment a bit.
My garden
The garden here is a typical Victorian terraced plot – over 100’ long and 20’ wide at the back. The layout has ‘evolved’ over the years, with lawns getting ever smaller and borders expanding to accommodate more plants. The orientation is east-west, so the north-facing side is in more or less permanent shade. Over the past couple of years I have replanted the front garden (50’ x 20’) – initially as a dry-shade garden, but since the loss of a 70 year old apple tree, it has acquired a lot more sun, and the options for planting have opened up considerably. I have an unheated greenhouse, and a very small pond. The planting is a mixture of herbaceous perennials, specimen shrubs, and year-round bulbs: if I have particular passions, they would have to include clematis, herbs and heucheras.
I also have an allotment nearby, where I grow vegetables and soft fruit, and where I am growing more and more flowers for cutting too.
The soil here in South Wiltshire is pretty poor – very alkaline, and full of ‘Wiltshire Potatoes’ (or flints, as they are more commonly known), but free-draining in the main. The allotment is on quite a sharp east-facing slope, so is very exposed to cold winds: raised beds are essential to create decent growing conditions. The weather, however, is generally kind and we suffer relatively few hard frosts.
Rebecca works in the Marketing department as part of the busy web team, focusing on updating the UK news and blog pages and Thompson & Morgan’s international website. Rebecca enjoys gardening and learning about flowers and growing vegetables with her young daughter.
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