Customer Trial Panel

Customer trials – update from Caroline Broome

Caroline has been sending us regular updates with photos of her trial products, but as we’re a little late adding them to the blog, please note that references to planting out times may be a bit out of date. We do apologise and will add updates more promptly from now on!

May/June 2013

Cornus Winter Flame is small, but showing good colour, now in the border. We shall see!

Anemone The Governor has enormous flowers only one or two were in flower, but these have survived being in bud during the snow.

Anemone The Governor

Daffodil Carnation Flowered Collection – the strong upright blooms are self-supporting.

Daffodil Carnation Flowered

Petunia Balcon Mixed – lovely strong plants.

And the Summer 2013 digitalis Illumination plugs are far stronger and healthier than their predecessors from last Autumn 2012.

The plastic tomato collars caused a stir at our NGS Open Day, because of the amazing results they produced deterring slugs & snails from our ligularia. And the good old tree lilies from trials 4 yrs ago are over 6ft tall!

Tomato auto-waterers used as a slug deterrent

We were on the BBC1 The One Show Tuesday 18th June 7pm as part of their NGS Festival Weekend feature.

Rebecca Tute

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.

We recently introduced you to some of the members of our customer trials team, who are busy working away in their gardens growing the seeds and plants we sent them earlier in the year. We’ve had a few updates and thought it was high time we shared them with you.

Joy Gough – 11th June 2013

Well, the summer finally got here. There are tomato Gardener’s Delight and cucumber Zeina (a mini one) in the greenhouse, which all look healthy, but have not put on the growth they normally do – it’s been too cold. I sowed 8 seeds of Zeina and all of them came up – I know have 3″ cucumbers growing. My tomato Alicante plants are 18″ tall and flowering.

Tomatoes doing well

Mini cucumber Zeina

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Lettuces on the other hand were grown in the greenhouse and waited and waited to be planted out, so instead we have been eating them straight from the greenhouse. Little Gem was the first of the season and what a difference in taste – I will put some outside in the veg plot. They’re slug resistant too!

Slug-free lettuce

Spring onions, beetroot, sweetcorn, carrots and parsnips are all starting to move. In fact, all the sweetcorn Butterscotch seeds I planted came up – I’ve grown these before and friends always ask for some. I plant these in a block, rather than rows, as it helps pollination.

Sweetcorn Butterscotch

The sprouts that were started off in the greenhouse will be planted out, but they need to be netted away from pigeons and cabbage white butterflies.

The plants from T&M are now either all planted in the garden or in hanging baskets… or any other container I can reuse! Geraniums have been flowering for two weeks now all on their own, waiting for the other plants to flower. The geranium Best Red are last year’s plants that I overwintered in the greenhouse and were the first to flower.

Geranium ‘Best Red’

Rebecca Tute

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.

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 Tute

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.

Joy Gough has just joined our blogging team of customer trial members and talks about her gardening experiences.

Joy Gough

My name is Joy, I am totally new to this blogging, so please bear with me, just like gardening it is a process of learning as you go.

Our garden started with 2 bought tomato plants, that was 30 years ago – now it has grown through trial and error to over half an acre of walled garden in the  town centre, hidden behind an unassuming wrought iron gate in Chippenham, Wiltshire. We don’t suffer from flooding or any severe weather conditions, making gardening enjoyable, but sometimes hard work, keeping us fit.

The garden behind the house is where it all started, clearing undergrowth, rebuilding walls and replanting, mainly small evergreen shrubs to give it height and structure and a large lawn in the middle for cricket or  football. Then the lawn was replaced with gravel beds planted with grasses, sedums, phlox and saxifragas, keeping everything low-maintenance and simple, finding out which plants thrive in our soil – loam over clay. I have various pots dotted around the back door for colour and scent. Once that part of the garden was established we tackled the end of the garden, this time putting up a greenhouse, coldframe, compost bins and water butts, planting a plum and a cherry tree and growing vegetables for our family. All this time watching the allotments next door getting overgrown and neglected.

Soon the greenhouse is full of seeds, cuttings and tender plants something I find very calming as some need watering, potting on or transplanting to their own pots.

Then in 2006 we had the opportunity to buy the allotments next door, now a 10 foot high area of brambles, elder trees, nettles and bindweed. Well, we knew a bit about gardening so why not try and extend the garden? As the allotments are 5 feet lower down we put steps in to link the gardens. In October 2006 in moved the JCBs and lorries, out went 140 tons of rubbish, all that was saved was one apple tree and a handful of snowdrops, also I managed to take cuttings from the 100 year old box hedge. So once again we started to rebuild the walls, plants were dug up and transplanted to the new garden, seeds were sown to grow on to keep the cost down.

Before…

Since then we have opened for The National Garden Scheme and the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust as the garden was created mainly for bees, butterflies and wildlife. This part of the garden is planted with low box borders with roses, echinaceas, phlox and clematis – plants that are nectar rich and flowering at different times. The rest is laid to lawns with rowan, magnolia, acers and Tibetan cherry planted in amongst the lawns. Portugese laurel hedges 5 feet tall create rooms within the garden. We also dug a pond for wildlife, I counted 13 newts last year. Seed heads are left on the plants through the winter for the birds, we try to be as organic as possible, letting nature work out the balance.

…and after

My husband cuts and edges all the lawns and plants the vegetable seeds. Any surplus fruit and vegetables is given to neighbours, who are always delighted. He also prunes and feeds the roses, then we meet somewhere in the garden for a cup of tea.

We have no training in doing this, so I was delighted to receive an award from Wiltshire Life Magazine in the Amateur Gardener of the Year section.

Thompson & Morgan invited me to trial plants for them in Spring 2011, which has been thoroughly enjoyable as I can do the reviews when it’s too dark to garden. It’s a win-win situation and also a new and exciting selection of plants of which I will be doing write ups when something to report.

Since I started this family and friends who have had no interest in gardening have redesigned their gardens, because they can see what can be done, so that’s positive!

Rebecca Tute

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.

Customer trial panel member Harry Cook has many years of gardening experience, winning several awards for his own garden displays. He made the news last year when he stopped thieves from taking his award-winning petunias!

Harry Cook

My name is Harry Cook. I stared gardening at a young age when I helped a relative on an allotment growing potatoes and vegetables. I also won a competition for ‘Best Preparation of a Seed Bed’ at Brooksby Agriculture college when I was in the Young Farmers’ club.

I left school at 15 and went to work at Whatton House working for Lord Crawshaw in the gardens. I then went to work for Loughborough Parks Department for 17 years, firstly working on sports grounds and playing fields and then moving onto tractors and machinery, before finally being made up to charge hand doing ground maintenance. I then moved on to work for a construction firm for 35 years driving heavy plant.

When l retired l had a lot more time for my garden and started to enter my front garden into competitions. l entered Loughborough in Bloom and won 3 trophies. l was also entered into the RHS East Midlands in Bloom for ‘Best Front Garden’, winning 3 Frank Constable Gold awards. l have also entered Garden News competitions, winning the Unsung Hero Award for the work l do for the community.

l have been doing customer trials for Thompson & Morgan for 3 years, which l really enjoy. The front garden is quite small, but l put up lots of baskets and tubs around it. I also put flowers on top of the bay window and over the front door, which makes it look twice as big. l have adopted some of the council-owned land at the front of the house (with their permission). The house sits next to a very busy roundabout, which brings its own problems, but the joy the garden brings to other people makes all the hard work worthwhile.

Rebecca Tute

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.