by Rebecca Tute | Apr 4, 2013 | Wildlife
Plants for wildlife
There are so many benefits to attracting wildlife into your garden. Apart from saving the decline of our native species, garden wildlife also acts as a natural pest control, preventing the need to spray harmful chemicals all over your garden. If you grow fruit and vegetables, you’ll need the help of bees to pollinate many of your crops. Contrary to popular belief wildlife gardens needn’t be messy! Well-maintained hedges and shrubs are perfect for nesting birds and insects, and a flowing herbaceous border will attract all sorts of beneficial insects to your garden. You could even create a container garden for wildlife with some of the plants listed below! Planting a wildlife garden couldn’t be easier; read on for more ideas on how to make a wildlife garden.
Single-flowered varieties are best for bees
Plants for bees
The number of bees in the UK is declining at an alarming rate, yet there are few explanations. It’s suggested that the decline in native and wild flower rich grassland could be a cause. Bees play a key role in pollinating many crops and some 35 per cent of our diet depends on pollination of crops by bees! Bees are active between February and October and it is crucial they have enough food during this time to help them through the winter and early spring. You can help by creating a wildlife garden and choosing a selection of the plants for bees listed below. For more information on how you can help bees take a look at our ‘Save the Bees’ article.
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Plants such as buddleja are ideal for attracing butterflies
Plants for butterflies
There are 58 species of butterfly native to the UK and many of these are under threat of extinction. Recent reports have shown, however, that recent conservation efforts have given some of our most threatened species a boost. You can do your bit to help the butterflies by planting nectar-rich flowers in your garden. Take a look at the list below for inspiration. For more information on helping butterflies take a look at our ‘Helping to conserve the UK’s butterflies’ page.
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Teasel is a valuable source of nectar for bees and butterflies, as well as attracting many seed-eating birds.
Plants for birds
Birds are welcome visitors to the garden and will eat aphids, caterpillars and slugs for you! You can attract birds into your garden by installing a bird bath and by putting out extra food throughout the harsh winter months. You can also grow a wide range of plants for birds, which produce berries, seeds or nuts at the end of the season. Plants can also be used to provide shelter or nesting sites for birds, protecting them from cats and other predators.
For more simple ideas on how you can attract wildlife to your garden take a look at our article about wildlife gardening.
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Top tips when planting for wildlife:
- Choose single-flowered varieties of plants. Bees and butterflies can’t access double flowers for pollen and nectar.
- Leave some of your culinary herbs to flower – they are a rich food source for bees and butterflies and will leave your garden buzzing on warm days!
- Leave your autumn clear up until the spring. The dead remains of plants provide valuable shelter for over-wintering insects.
- Try not to spray your plants with insecticides as these will kill beneficial insects too. Be patient and the pests will often be eaten naturally by ladybirds, lacewings, spiders, small mammals and birds.
Click here for a full list of plants to grow in your garden to create a haven for wildlife.
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.
by Rebecca Tute | Mar 27, 2013 | Gardening News
Oca – the taste test
In January one of our guest bloggers wrote about oca, a vegetable originally from South America that’s grown very much like potatoes. The knobbly tubers need a relatively long growing season before being harvested in the autumn, about 2 weeks after frost has killed the top growth. Exposing the harvested tubers to sunlight sweetens them.
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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.
by Rebecca Tute | Mar 26, 2013 | Customer Trial Panel
In this gardening blog post Geoff Stonebanks writes about his gardening experiences on the south coast of England and becoming a member of Thompson & Morgan’s customer trial panel.
I’m Geoff Stonebanks, fast approaching my 60th birthday and retired now with my garden in Sussex for 9 years now! Passionate gardener and fundraiser for Macmillan Cancer Support through organising garden trails and garden events.
2012 was an absolutely amazing year Driftwood. In June I was appointed an Asst County Organiser for the National Gardens Scheme in East & Mid Sussex to be followed, in October, appointment as their Publicity Officer. July found me being overwhelmed to realise that my garden had been shortlisted to the final 15 (from over 1200 entries nationwide) in the Daily Mail National Garden Competition, only then to discover it made the final 4 and was awarded a coveted blue plaque.
In October the news was even better when I found out I had won, outright, the Garden News Best Small Garden in the UK, again from over 1000 entries. Coupled with that the garden had seen over 2000 visitors and raised over £8000 for charity in just one year! Not bad going for a small plot on the south coast that’s only 100ft long and about 40 feet at its widest point! What makes the garden even more interesting to most visitors is its location, facing the sea between Brighton and Eastbourne, exposed to the salt-laden winds from the sea.
The back garden in 2007
Front garden with the sea in the distance, November 2011
The 2 images show the back garden in 2007 and the front garden, with the sea in the distance, in November 2011.
It is an extremely challenging place to garden. Tim Sharples, Head Judge from the Daily Mail said “This bright, beach-inspired plot embraces its location with imaginative planting.”
In essence, it was a back garden of 2 lawns split by a central path with borders around the edge and a defined slope from bottom right to top left. The front was just lawn. Work really began in 2007 and I worked my way down the garden, with the front only being completed in February 2012. My dream was a cottage garden but the salt laden winds prevented that. Many of the trial plants I have been sent already, Dahlia Fire and Ice, Foxglove Dalmatian Pink are going to need to work hard to survive in this garden. In the end it has developed organically a bit at a time as an idea came to me, no grand plan. I did appoint a garden designer at the onset but didn’t like what they did so cut my losses and decided to create it all myself. I had to work with the prevailing weather conditions and create the gravel beds and plants that defy the wind and the lashing rain! I wanted a garden with many rooms, which was made slightly easier with the slope from bottom right to top left forcing me to create level areas across the garden to position furniture on. I created wind breaks with grisolina littoralis and oleria transversii Tweedledum, low hedges to help protect areas and use of wicker panels to both ease the wind and help divide into rooms. The garden sloped upwards from the house, which tends to make it look smaller. However, heavy dense planting with no lawn and no exposed soil create an illusion of a garden much bigger than it actually is.
I often say I am an instant gardener, I can visualise what I want but then want to see it straight away, not having the patience to wait for it to grow that way! Competition judges last year were so impressed with the established look the garden had despite its relative newness. This seems to be a skill I have acquired to make the area look long established. They also said small gardens can be a challenge trying to fit in everything you want. They’re even more of a challenge when they’re on a slope, making them look even smaller, however, they felt I had created something special, filling the garden with a huge range of plants without making it look cramped. There are individual sculptures of metal and wood and the results of beachcombing, which they said equal a coastal heaven with its own distinctive personality.
The front garden, July 2012
The front garden, which is the most coastal looking area, and clearly the most challenging to plant, now looks quite incredible in the summer as the picture shows. Visitors are absolutely stunned to see that this also has summer perennials clustered around the rowing boat in the centre of the gravel garden for protection. There is verbena bonariensis (purple top), verbena rigida (Polaris) gaillardia ‘Dazzler‘ (blanket flower), coreopsis ‘Calypso’, fuchsia ‘Winston Churchill’, and penstemon ‘Magenta White’ to name but a few. The front garden also has many different grasses (stipa tenuissima – ponytail grass – one of my favourites,) and tough coastal plants, hippophae rhamnoides (sea buckthorn) and tamarix tetrandra (4 stamen tamarisk).
Throughout the garden there are inspirations from my Dad’s sister, Margaret Grindrod, who was a keen gardener and many of whose plants (she died in 2004) I now possess and also my Dad, Ron Stonebanks, who died in 2007. He was a fish merchant on the docks in Fleetwood when I was a child and I have a fish basket and fish crates with my grandfather’s business stamped on them. These helped influence the style for the front garden. Also many of his plants are here too.
I was impressed by Derek Jarman’s garden and have taken some of those ideas. In the main I have done what I have wanted, having experienced the weather here and achieved it by trial and error. I love to visit smaller gardens and enjoy seeing things that I can take away and use myself and always pleased when others see my garden and say they will do the same.
2013 is the 4th year of opening to the public (17 times this year) and we have had over 6000 visitors so far and raised an astonishing £16000 for charity.
When I first decided to create my garden, with absolutely no qualifications or experience in garden design, I just did what felt right for me and the space I had to work with. Never be afraid to try something, even if it fails. Be bold and put combinations of plants together that you might, at first think is unconventional, or maybe think won’t work, it is amazing what looks great together if you just think outside the box. Tim Sharples, a garden designer and Head Judge for the Daily Mail Competiton, was bowled over by the planting in the front garden (bearing in mind its exposed location) and assured me he would be taking elements to incorporate in his own future designs.
The back garden, July 2012
At the back, it is difficult to gain height due to the wind, so the use of rusted metal objects and tall wooden sculpture help create height and drama to the garden, alongside the some of the perennials which give it height, the verbena again and the cephalaria gigantica (giant scabious) which shoots like a firework out of the rusted metal frame or the cynara cardunculus or cardoon rising dramatically by the pear tree!
- The planting elements of the garden are made up of 3 main styles/types; Coastal planting to cope with the salt-laden winds, a large butia capitata (pindo palm tree) in the centre at the back, 2 chamaerops humilis (dwarf fan palm), a trithrinax campestris (blue needle palm) and several phormium tenax (New Zealand flax).
- The hardy perennials that work in a coastal setting but give the flavour of a cottage garden, some of my favourites being fuchsias, 2 of which belonged to my Dad and his sister, ‘Empress of Prussia’ and Genii, of which there are now several established plants in the garden and new ones I have acquired, ‘Pink Temptation’, ‘Lena’, ‘Lady in Black’ & ‘Winston Churchill’. Other loved plants are leucanthemum x superbum ‘Snowlady’, (Shasta Daisy) and oenothera macrocarpa (evening primrose). Fuchsia ‘Duke of Wellington’, one of this year’s trial plants, can now be added to that.
- Then for the summer months there is the final part of the equation with the introduction of summer annuals across the garden, not just in the cottage perennial area but also in pots and containers in the coastal area as well, which bring the 2 other elements of the planting together creating a naturalistic flow and gelling between the coastal and cottage area.
So, I believe it was the combination of my success last year and the wide spread publicity of the garden through its web site, www.driftwoodbysea.co.uk, all my tweets about events and planting in the garden and the competition success that led me to be invited to be part of the Thompson & Morgan Customer Trials in 2013.
The real challenge for me will be trying to make work the plants I am trialling in a coastal garden. Many of those being sent to me are not ones I would have chosen for this environment. I will be doing all I can to support them and I’m sure they will do well. Many visitors are amazed that I have success with plants that one would not expect to see in a coastal plot. You can all check out what is happening on the Thompson & Morgan page of my web site. I have chosen to record all the details there from receipt to flowering in words and pictures!
I am looking forward to this year and hope to report back later in the year on the successes and failures with the customer trial programme products I will be sent this summer.
Read more about becoming a member of the customer trial panel here.
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.
