Hydrangea hybrid Runaway Bride® ‘Snow White’                                                                      SunBelievable™ ‘Brown Eyed Girl’

We’re thrilled to announce that our entry ‘Hydrangea hybrid ‘Runaway Bride® ‘Snow White’ has today been awarded the prestigious accolade of RHS Chelsea Flower Show Plant of the Year.

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Sonia Mermagen

Sonia works at Thompson & Morgan in the role of press and communications officer. She is a self-proclaimed ‘reluctant’ gardener and is generally amazed if anything flourishes in her garden. Sonia has a ‘hands off’ approach to gardening and believes that this helps to encourage bees, butterflies and other wildlife. (That’s her excuse anyway!)

www.thompson-morgan.com

We’re teaming up with RHS Garden Hyde Hall to create a fabulous garden for an event this summer, aptly named Floral Fantasia. We’re transforming an area of the well-known RHS site near Chelmsford in Essex into a magnificent floral exhibition, showcasing many varieties of bedding plants.

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Sonia Mermagen

Sonia works at Thompson & Morgan in the role of press and communications officer. She is a self-proclaimed ‘reluctant’ gardener and is generally amazed if anything flourishes in her garden. Sonia has a ‘hands off’ approach to gardening and believes that this helps to encourage bees, butterflies and other wildlife. (That’s her excuse anyway!)

www.thompson-morgan.com

‘Sunbelievable™’ features:

• Very floriferous and free-flowering
• Stunning bicolour blooms
• Multi-branching
• 1,000 flowers over the growing season
• Fabulous cut flower
• Hugely decorative patio plant
• Truly compact – Height: 60cm (24in) Spread: 100cm (39in)
• Day length neutral – blooms even on shorter, less bright days
• Sterile – so no pollen but still very attractive to bees
• Heat tolerant – great for hot, sunny borders
• Thrives in any well-drained soil
• Will recover quickly if left to dry out
• Deadheading improves flowering performance

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Sonia Mermagen

Sonia works at Thompson & Morgan in the role of press and communications officer. She is a self-proclaimed ‘reluctant’ gardener and is generally amazed if anything flourishes in her garden. Sonia has a ‘hands off’ approach to gardening and believes that this helps to encourage bees, butterflies and other wildlife. (That’s her excuse anyway!)

www.thompson-morgan.com

Anemone Flowered Mix                                                                             Double Flowered Hellebore ‘Selene’

Our plant breeding team is proud to unveil its latest success – two brand new and exclusive mixes of hellebores, the UK’s favourite winter-flowering plants. What makes these hellebore mixes so special is that they are both 100% true to type. This has never been achieved before. Stock is only available from T&M and is understandably limited, but gardeners can pre-order from our website now for delivery next spring.

The hellebores featured in the Anemone Flowered Mix are truly breath-taking with their exquisite central ruff of small petals, pleated like a ballerina’s tutu. They look so delicate, but in fact are incredibly hardy. There are six different varieties in the mix, each one with unique colouring and markings, but all flowering 100% true to type.

The Double Flowered Mix is another selection of six stunning hellebore varieties. Each one is uniquely coloured and patterned, but is 100% double across the mix. Perfect for winter perennial planting schemes, our resident plant breeder, Charles Valin, recommends growing them on a gentle slope where they can really show off!

Charles says:

“We’re renowned for our hellebore breeding programme at Thompson & Morgan, so we have seen some amazing breeding breakthroughs over the years, but these two new mixes are really superb. It’s unheard of for a mix of hellebores to bloom 100% true to type!”

 Hellebores have long been a favourite of Britain’s gardeners. Flowering for well over three months, these tough, durable plants provide colour at a time when gardens are usually drab and wintery.

Why do UK gardeners love hellebores?

It’s because:

• They provide a long-lasting flowering display from late winter to spring
• They are robust and long-lived hardy perennials
• They attract bees and other pollinators, providing food when it is most scarce
• They make great cut flowers, particularly at a time of year when there’s not much else in the cutting garden

Anemone Flowered Mix comprises varieties Aurora, Juno, Ceres, Diana, Discordia and Juventus and is available from £14.99.

Double Flowered Mix comprises varieties Selene, Athena, Demeter, Artemis, Eris and Hebe and is available from £14.99.

Height and spread up to 40cm (16in)

For more information on Thompson & Morgan’s hellebore breeding programme, go to www.thompson-morgan.com/hellebore-breeding-programme

Sonia Mermagen

Sonia works at Thompson & Morgan in the role of press and communications officer. She is a self-proclaimed ‘reluctant’ gardener and is generally amazed if anything flourishes in her garden. Sonia has a ‘hands off’ approach to gardening and believes that this helps to encourage bees, butterflies and other wildlife. (That’s her excuse anyway!)

www.thompson-morgan.com

Poppy ‘Supreme’                                                                                                    Tomato ‘Oh Happy Day’ F1

We’re thrilled to be releasing two new seed varieties in the next few weeks. One, Poppy ‘Supreme’, is yet another innovative new flower from our own breeding programme. The other, Tomato ‘Oh Happy Day’ will most certainly be welcomed by gardeners who struggle to grow tomatoes outside due to the ever-present danger of blight.

Poppy ‘Supreme’ lives up to its name. Its fully double flowers are three times larger than those of other similar papaver rhoeas varieties and boast exquisite crinkly petals with picotee edges in pink, cherry and orange tones with white centres. Growing to a final garden height of 75 cm, Poppy ‘Supreme’ is long-flowering and multi-branching, making it ideal for direct sowing in borders and beds.

Some six years ago, Charles Valin, who heads up our plant breeding team, spotted some plants in a batch of double Shirley poppies that had extra-large flowers. Two generations of selection later, Charles’ team had managed to ‘fix’ a giant-flowered mixture in double picotee bicolours.

Charles comments:

“All the hard work that we’ve put in to create this stunning poppy has been worth it! The flowers are huge and yet they retain their elegance and are in perfect proportion to the overall plant size. We discovered that Poppy ‘Supreme’ has a very robust constitution and blooms for twice as long as traditional poppies. ‘Supreme’ was a real hit with bees in our trials and I think gardeners will love them too!”

Tomato ‘Oh Happy Day’ is a real bonus for gardeners. Following on from ‘Losetto’, and ‘Mountain Magic’, ‘Oh Happy Day’ F1 is a cross between a very blight-resistant North American line and a French Marmande type. In T&M trials, ‘Oh Happy Day’ F1 resisted late blight infection for three weeks longer than ‘Mountain Magic’. The round, slightly flatter, 150g tomatoes grow in clusters of 3-7 fruits which have a superb taste balance of acidity and sweetness.

Colin Randel, Thompson & Morgan’s vegetable expert, says:

“The high late blight resistance of ‘Oh Happy Day’ means that these outdoor-grown tomatoes will have longer to ripen to their full potential and to provide the superb flavour that only comes with sun-kissed, outdoor-grown tomatoes”.

Poppy ‘Supreme’ and Tomato ‘Oh Happy Day’ will be available from mid December 2017. Poppy ‘Supreme’ £2.49 for 300 seeds. Tomato ‘Oh Happy Day’ £2.99 for 8 seeds

Sonia Mermagen

Sonia works at Thompson & Morgan in the role of press and communications officer. She is a self-proclaimed ‘reluctant’ gardener and is generally amazed if anything flourishes in her garden. Sonia has a ‘hands off’ approach to gardening and believes that this helps to encourage bees, butterflies and other wildlife. (That’s her excuse anyway!)

www.thompson-morgan.com

Innovative new seed range launches with over 60 new varieties

The New Product Development team at Thompson & Morgan (read more) has been busy. The first item on the newly-formed team’s agenda has been to put together our biggest ever introduction of new seed varieties. Over 60 varieties will be introduced in the company’s 2019 seed range; a significant number are from our own renowned breeding programme headed by Charles Valin, T&M’s resident master plant breeder.

Joseph Cordy, Thompson & Morgan’s head of B2B sales, said:

“We are delighted to be able to announce the biggest ever range ‘refresh’ in our retail seed offering; this confirms our commitment to innovation and quality. There are some really exciting new varieties, including several which are completely exclusive to Thompson & Morgan. This is just the start of an extensive programme of innovation in which we are investing heavily and further announcements concerning the range will follow.”

T&M’s head of commercial, Chris Wright commented:

“Joseph has been working closely with the horticultural team since joining Thompson & Morgan and this news is a direct result of all the hard work they’ve put in. He is already proving to be a major asset to the company and as he has said, there’s a lot more to come!”

 The 2019 seed range will be available to garden centres and other retailers from July 2018 and to online customers from early September 2018.

Sonia Mermagen

Sonia works at Thompson & Morgan in the role of press and communications officer. She is a self-proclaimed ‘reluctant’ gardener and is generally amazed if anything flourishes in her garden. Sonia has a ‘hands off’ approach to gardening and believes that this helps to encourage bees, butterflies and other wildlife. (That’s her excuse anyway!)

www.thompson-morgan.com