by Rebecca Tute | Jun 19, 2013 | Wildlife
How to encourage bees into your garden
Sedum
Bees play a key role in pollinating many fruits and vegetables. 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. By introducing a few spring, summer and autumn-flowering plants to your garden you will help to extend the foraging period.
To attract bees, you needn’t leave your garden to go wild – many cultivated garden plants are just as valuable to bees for food and shelter. If you only have a small garden or balcony why not try planting up a container with some bee-friendly plants? Lavender, skimmia, heliotrope, herbs, hardy geraniums, agastache, buddleja ‘Buzz’, single-flowered dahlias, single-flowered fuchsias, sedum and dwarf sunflowers are all suitable for a container and provide nectar and pollen for bees. Site your container or border in the sunniest position possible to make it more attractive to bees.
Hardy geranium ‘Rozanne’
Try making a ‘bee hotel’ for solitary bees to over-winter in, using hollow plant stems (such as bamboo canes) cut into piece about 10-20cm long. Tie 15-20 pieces of hollow stem together in a bundle and hang in a sunny but sheltered area such as the side of a shed or trellis.
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Top tips to encourage bees into your garden:
- Choose single-flowered varieties of plants. Bees and can’t access double flowers for pollen and nectar. Flowers with petals that form long tunnels are also inaccessible to bees.
- Leave some of your culinary herbs to flower – they are a rich food source for bees and will leave your garden buzzing on warm days!
- 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.
Cornflower
Other flowers to include in your bee garden:
Crocus
Muscari
Bergenia
Echinacea
Scabious
Cornflowers
Teasel
Eryngium
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 | Jun 10, 2013 | Gardening News
Whatever size your garden is, there are lots of flowers you can plant to encourage butterflies.
Encouraging butterflies into your garden
The recent ‘State of Nature’ report showed that common garden butterfly populations have declined by 24% in the last 10 years. In the last century, 4 butterflies and over 60 moths became extinct. Destruction of their natural habitats is partly to blame, as are changes in climate and weather and pollution.
Butterflies aren’t just there to be pretty either, they indicate whether the environment and ecosystems are healthy – areas that have high numbers of butterflies and moths are more likely to have high numbers of other invertebrates. They are also an important food source for birds, bats and other animals. Without butterflies,
The Butterfly Conservation website has a wealth of information on what we can do as individuals to help butterfly populations.
There are many plants that will attract butterflies, many of which are perfect for growing in containers. So even if you’ve only got a small garden or balcony, you can still do your bit. In a large container (preferably at least 60cm in diameter) plant up either a buddleja or lavender plant in the middle and then surround this with a mixture of marjoram, heather, aubretia, evening primrose or sedum. Aim for 3 or 4 varieties around the ‘main’ plant, depending on the size of your container. Keep the plants well watered, so that they keep producing nectar.
If you’ve got a large garden and the luxury of space, you could create a butterfly border with a mixture of nectar plants to provide a food source for butterflies from spring to autumn. Plant as many different varieties as you can, packing the plants into your border in groups to make it easier for butterflies to locate them.
Grow native wildflowers
You could even create a wildflower ‘meadow’, which provides nectar for food and somewhere for the butterflies to lay their eggs. It’s quite easy to do, especially if you’ve got an area in your garden that already has some long grass growing in it. Sow some wildflower seeds in pots or module trays and once they’re ready for planting out, plant them in your wildflower meadow. Cut the grass a few times in the first year, so that the flowers don’t get smothered by it, but in following years you can leave it to grow and just cut it back at the end of the season, once the flowers have set seed.
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Here are some tips on how to encourage butterflies into your garden:
- Choose single flowers – they have far more nectar than double flowers and plant them in a sunny, sheltered spot.
- Deadhead them regularly to encourage more flowers and, if you’re growing them in containers, keep them well watered.
- Adding organic mulch will stop your plants drying out so quickly.
- Avoid using pesticides, insecticides or any other garden chemicals – they kill butterflies and other beneficial insects
- Use peat-free compost
- Plant buddleja to attract different species of butterflies – in fact, it’s a favourite of 18 species!
Lunaria, sedum, lavender, honeysuckle and forget-me-not
Other flowers to include in your butterfly garden are:
See our ‘plants for wildlife‘ page for the full list of flowers to grow in your butterfly garden.
And lastly, take part in the Big Butterfly Count (20th July – 11th August 2013) to record butterflies in your area and submit your findings online.
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 | Jun 3, 2013 | Customer Trial Panel
You may already be familiar with Steve Woodward’s previous posts on our blog. He is also a member of our customer trial panel, here is his profile…
Collecting some produce for a warming stew
Hi, I am Steve and I live in the East Midlands Derbyshire town of Ilkeston, roughly equal in distance between the cities of Nottingham and Derby, which can make it very interesting when they play each other in the league!
I have just about completed my second garden, the first one was started when I bought a house after getting married in 1977. It was a very long thin area of back garden with a small front garden, both areas were very untidy as the previous occupants were not interested in gardening at all. The front was simple to sort with a slabbed centre bordered by various shrubs such as hostas and peonies with one small tree of prunus amanogawa, the tall narrow Japanese flowering cherry. This always looks spectacular from late April to late May when it’s full of beautiful pink blossom.
The back garden was split in to 3 areas, the first being a lawn area with perennial flower borders, which led on to a fruit garden, then a greenhouse and finally a decent sized vegetable garden. Then we moved!
The new house as it was
We decided to move around 10 years ago and bought a house only about 2 miles away. It had belonged to an elderly lady who had the gardens made by relatives for low maintenance – a couple of slabbed areas and membrane with pebbles over it covering the rest. This was brilliant for me, a blank canvas! And from then up until now I have been gradually filling it with various favourite perennials – hostas, ferns and a few of the more jungly exotic plants that I have a passion for. I started off with a 6’ x 6’ greenhouse to use for tomatoes and cucumbers, then at a later date for a special birthday family chipped in to buy another 6’ x 6’ greenhouse. I took the back off one and the front off the other, joined them together to make one 12’ x 6’ greenhouse and used the spare aluminium parts and glass to make a large cold frame, bonus! I also have a love of chilli varieties, which I grow each year in the greenhouse.
And as it is now
Selection of chillis from last year
As specimen plants dotted around I have a few trachycarpus palms, I have tried a few palms but find this to be the only truly hardy palm in the UK (for my area anyway). A few bamboos, olive and bay trees, 4 types of gunnera, musa basjoo a couple of variegated fatsia japonicas, a fig tree and a good collection of acers.
For around 15 years now I have cultivated a variety of vegetables in a full sized allotment. This is fortunately only across the road from where I work as a warehouse manager, which means on the rare occasion when we have had a really hot dry spell I can pop over the road and give everything a good watering. Plus It was very easy to take spare pallets over to make my compost heap and it also makes an ideal space for comparing new veg varieties along side regular marker types to assess the results for the Thompson & Morgan trials.
A compost bin made of old pallets
I have taken and passed the RHS level II exam in Horticulture and passed a course in herbalism. I also co-run the Garden Friends online gardening forum. Peter Seabrook has been a great inspiration. I am a definite sun lover and am at home sitting in the garden on a warm sunny day with a cup of tea and a gardening crossword, could just do with a few more of those sunny days!
Just a follow up to one of last years trials…
Here is a picture of the patio rhubarb crowns that were sent out to test as patio plants. It is pictured in one of your patio bags showing the succulent red stems that anyone without a garden or someone with a balcony at flats even could grow and get one of their daily 5.
Patio rhubarb
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 | May 29, 2013 | Gardening News
T&M’s Sonia Mermagen has been helping long-time vegetable exhibitor Arthur Davies set up Thompson & Morgan’s stand at this year’s Suffolk Show.
Breaking news: Arthur and Mary’s display won the Notcutt Trophy for Best Exhibit in the flower tent and a gold medal!
I’d been drafted in to help veteran vegetable exhibitor and show-man, Arthur Davies, set up his T&M sponsored stand at this year’s Suffolk Show. Once I’d found the stand in the Flower and Garden Experience marquee, I saw that Arthur, his wife Mary and their helper, Ralph, had already made quite a start.
T&M’s stand
But there were still lots of boxes of vegetables to be selected, polished and arranged.
Boxes of veg…
…ready for the display
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More veg!
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Arthur and Ralph were taking the outer leaves off cauliflowers at a rate of knots and impaling the naked caulis on long nails inside a triangular frame adorned with leafy conifer fronds.
Arthur Davies
Cauliflower arrangements
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Although Arthur hasn’t exhibited at the Suffolk Show before, he is well known to lots of the other exhibitors who have met him at some of the many other shows that he has been to in his 43 years as a ‘vegetable show-man’. Various nurserymen and old friends dropped by the stand for a chat.
Old friends
Meanwhile, Mary was busy making basket displays of brightly-coloured peppers. She put me to work, stuffing the gaps with parsley.
Mary Davies
My first attempt!
The first attempt
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The finished article. (The cocktail sticks are to indicate to Arthur which ‘side’ should be facing the front when he comes to place the exhibit in the display.)
Cocktail sticks!
Placing the exhibits can be a precarious business.
Easy does it…
The display was starting to take shape.
Coming along nicely…
Nearly there
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Luckily Andy brought the tops to the Thompson & Morgan seed stands!
Adding the header boards
All the exhibits need to be labelled.
Labelling the veg
And finally Arthur – after some finishing touches by Mary – declares the display ready for inspection by the Show’s judges on Thursday morning.
Ready for judging
Arthur and Mary with the finished display
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The whole stand looks great!
T&M’s Suffolk Show stand
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Arthur and Mary Davies
Sonia and Arthur
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 | May 22, 2013 | Gardening News
Thompson & Morgan’s new autumn plant range is now online!
Now that summer is well and truly on its way and plants are putting on some decent growth at last, it’s a good time to start thinking about next season.
Our autumn bulbs, plants and shrubs range is now online and is the perfect planning tool; it’s full of plant ideas to help keep your garden looking lovely well past the summer months, into autumn and on into winter.
Ordering plants now means that you won’t miss out on these exciting new varieties and they’ll be delivered just at the right time for planting.
There’s so much choice – whether your’e a fan of unusual shrubs or a lover of colourful spring bulbs, you’ll find plenty to tempt you. Look out for new and interesting varieties that can’t always be found in garden centres and nurseries and don’t forget that whatever you buy is backed up by our 100% satisfaction guarantee.
All our products are trialled and tested, both by us and our team of customer trialists, to ensure great performance. We currently have 65 members in the trial panel who grow a selection of our plants in their own gardens up and down the country. They report back to us on what they’ve achieved and we take their feedback into consideration when deciding which plants to offer to our customers.
Here are some of the highlights of the new autumn range:
Cercis ‘Forest Pansy’
Cercis ‘Forest Pansy’
Perfect for small gardens, this compact tree will rival any flowering cherry for spring colour. In spring it’s smothered in delightful purple blossom and goes on flowering for a long period. The ruby red glow of the summer leaves ages to a vibrant orange by autumn. Cercis ‘Forest Pansy’ can grow to 3m (10ft) in height and needs no pruning, except to remove damaged or poorly placed branches in the winter. However, in smaller gardens it can be grown as a shrub and, once established, pruned back to 60-90cm from the ground in late winter or early spring.
Photinia ‘Pink Marble’
Photinia ‘Pink Marble’
A variation on the popular garden centre photinia ‘Red Robin’, the new ‘Pink Marble’ has the same eye-catching red foliage, but has speckled pink leaves too. Photinia ‘Pink Marble’ is very easy to grow and will thrive in most soils and positions. This low-maintenance plant grows to 2.5m (8ft) and is impressive as a stand-alone plant, but also makes a great hard-wearing, low-growing hedge. To maintain it as a hedge, we recommed trimming the plants up to 3 times a year, from late spring through to mid-August.
Abelia ‘Kaleidoscope’
Abelia ‘Kaleidoscope’
The low-growing abelia ‘Kaleidoscope’ plants burst into a riot of colour almost from the minute you plant them up! Excellent ground cover, they’ll quickly knit together to stop weeds in their tracks. The attractive 3-coloured foliage changes from lime-green to fiery orange and red and is complemented by white fragrant blooms from July to October. The compact, dense habit make it perfect for borders and patio containers. Plant abelia ‘Kaleidoscope’ in any well-drained, ferile soil in full sun for best results. Deadheading prolongs the flowering season and, if you live in area where winters are severe, adding a deep bark mulch around the base of the plants in autumn will protect the roots.
Tulip ‘Moulin Rouge’
Tulip bulbs
Tulip bulbs are really easy to grow and make a real statement, whether you plant them in borders or in patio containers. We’ve introduced some new tulips to our autumn range, including ‘Moulin Rouge’, the most fragrant tulip we’ve ever found! Snap these beauties up while you can – there aren’t many scented tulips in the flower world and you won’t want to miss out on the sweet, brown sugar fragrance of ‘Moulin Rouge’. There’s also the fabulous ‘Starline’ with its red and white bicolour blooms and not forgetting ‘Pop up Yellow’, which initially grows like any other tulip, then the middle part ‘pops up’, making it look like an exotic bird!
Honeysuckle ‘Firecracker’
Honeysuckle ‘Firecracker’
Yes, it really is a honeysuckle! ‘Firecracker’, unlike many other hardy honeysuckles, is not prone to mildew. The unusual collared flower heads and amazing fragrance are a real talking point and make honeysuckle ‘Firecracker’ a must-have for your borders. It flowers from September to October, grows to 2m (6.5ft) and thrives in a sunny spot.
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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