Our gardening blog covers a wide variety of topics, including fruit, vegetable and tree stories. Read some of the top gardening stories right here.
Propagation, planting out and cultivation posts from writers that know their subjects well.
If you’re looking for answers to your geranium and pelargonium troubleshooting questions, you’ve come to the right place. Here are some timely tips on everything from encouraging more flowers to making your plants more compact. Geraniums are easy to grow, and some of the most common problems are easily solved with a bit of additional care. Here’s how to rejuvenate your geraniums.
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Taking cuttings is an easy way to get more of your favourite pelargoniums. Try propagating one of your own special plants or, if a friend has a particularly lovely specimen, ask if you can take a cutting from theirs! Here’s our step-by-step guide to successfully taking your own geranium cuttings.
Browse our full range of pelargonium and geranium plants for inspiration.
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If you want to know how to overwinter your favourite tender geraniums (more correctly called pelargoniums) to enjoy the following year, we’ve got you covered. Pelargoniums don’t have a dormant period, so the easiest way to keep them going through the winter is to dig them up and keep them as indoor houseplants on sunny windowsills. Here’s our how-to guide and video to tell you everything you need to know about overwintering pelargoniums.
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Drought tolerant plants not only just look good, they’re low maintenance
Image: Agapanthus ‘Black Jack’ (RHS 2023 Chelsea Winner) from Thompson & Morgan
There are lots of good reasons to grow drought tolerant plants. During hot summers the need for frequent watering is time consuming. Not to mention costly to the environment and your pocket too, should rainfall in your area fail to keep up with demand.
We asked The Sunday Gardener, Carol Bartlett, her advice on drought tolerant plants. Here are some of her all time favourites, some of which positively thrive on neglect…
Carol Bartlett has been gardening for over 30 years creating many different types of gardens. Her website, The Sunday Gardener, was set up over 10 years ago to provide practical down-to-earth advice, especially for new gardeners, no matter what size their garden or vegetable plot. She also aims to inspire others to enjoy gardening and reap the benefits of being outside with nature.
Carol writes the website information herself, and most of the images have been taken in her gardens or those she has visited. The idea is to show plants in an authentic garden setting. Her philosophy is that gardening is a great combination of the therapeutic and practical. It is a cliché, but still true, the garden is a haven in which to escape day-to-day pressures. You can follow Carol on Facebook and Instagram and watch her helpful videos over on YouTube.
Celebrate National Vegetarian Week with delicious recipes from gardening bloggers around the UK
Image: monticello
At Thompson & Morgan, we’re passionate about growing our own food. But sowing, growing and nurturing delicious produce is only half of the story. Harvesting, preparing and eating these vitamin-packed wonder foods is just as important, right?
This year, 15 – 21st May is National Vegetarian Week. To celebrate, we asked our favourite green fingered bloggers to share their best vegetarian plot-to-plate recipes. Here are some of their ideas and delicious serving suggestions to help you make the most of your fresh fruit and veg.
The Thompson & Morgan horticultural team produces a wealth of content around gardening and food production. Since the first seed catalogue was published in 1855, Thompson & Morgan has grown to become one of the UK’s largest Mail Order Seed and Plant companies. Through the publication of our catalogues and the operation of our award-winning website, Thompson & Morgan is able to provide home gardeners with the very best quality products money can buy.
We all know how tasty fresh vegetables are in meals and salads. However, no matter how well you seem to time your visits to the grocery store, finding the freshest of produce is mostly by sheer luck. Growing your own vegetables gives you a break from grocery store trips while ensuring that you enjoy the freshest of veggies grown organically all year around.
Besides that, gardening is a rewarding task that brings a lot of good to your life. Being around greenery calms the mind, which alleviates signs of stress and anxiety. Additionally, gardening provides a perfect escape from the daily hustles of life, which allows you the break necessary to keep yourself balanced. While it can feel daunting at first, growing your own vegetables isn’t that hard. Here are some tips to get you started.
©Shutterstock – There’s nothing like the flavour of your own home-grown vegetables!
1. Find the best location
Getting a good harvest from your vegetable garden depends on how well you provided the right conditions for healthy growth. And, providing the right conditions starts with picking the right location for your garden. Here are some guidelines for you:
Sunny area
Light is a necessity for the growth of any plant, and most vegetables do well when exposed to about 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight. You need to pick a place in your garden that receives sun for the most part of the day. However, this is not to say that you can’t start a vegetable garden if you don’t have a backyard. You can grow some vegetables and culinary herbs indoors or in a window box, and still enjoy a good harvest. If you have a southern or western-facing window, that should be the location of your garden as such windows let in a considerable amount of sunlight.
However, if your house is limited in terms of light, you can grow your plants under grow lights. LED grow lights mimic the sun through technology to ensure that your plants get the full spectrum of the light.
A spot that drains well
When plants sit in soggy soil for too long, they end up having root rot and eventually die. In this case, you need a place that drains well and is not prone to floods. You also want it levelled well to avoid soil erosion.
If you don’t have such a space in your garden, consider planting your vegetables in raised soil beds. If you are growing them indoors, go for the potting mix that drains well and pots that have holes at the bottom.
©Shutterstock – Where soils are poor, a raised bed can overcome this problem.
2. Decide on the vegetables to grow
When you think about how much money you spend on vegetables, you can easily be enticed to grow every vegetable that you see in the grocery store. However, it is good to start with a few and continue adding more as you perfect your gardening skills. But before you get to decide which vegetables to grow, you need to consider the weather in your area first. If you live in a place that is mostly hot, vegetables that prefer a cooler climate might not do too well. Make sure that you do your research thoroughly.
A good guide on the vegetables that you can start with is in your meals timetable. Consider growing the vegetables that you spend the most money on. It would be a waste of time and resources growing vegetables that are rarely used in your kitchen unless you are doing it as a business.
3. Have the necessities ready
Before you start growing your vegetables, you need to ensure that you have everything that you need throughout the process. For starters, you need the right tools to prepare the soil for planting. Such tools include a trowel, shovel, and garden rake. You also need a watering can, hose or sprinkler for watering your plants.
If you are growing them on the windowsill indoors, you need to have pots, potting mix, and trays to place the pots on. You also need a small watering can as well.
Whether you are growing your vegetables indoors or outside, you need high-quality seeds or seedlings. Be sure to get them from a reliable supplier.
©Thompson and Morgan / Derek St Romaine – Make sure that you have all of the tools you’ll need to grow the best crops.
4. Start planting
Most seed packets come with instructions on how to prepare the soil for planting and how you should plant them. Otherwise, ensure that you dig down your soil to loosen it. Next, remove all the weeds and apply fertilizer. Next, make small troughs in the soil to put in the seeds. If you have an indoor garden, you can use your hand to make troughs. In addition, ensure that you are using a rich soil mixture.
However, you need to make a few considerations when planning your garden. For instance, if you are growing tall vegetables such as sweet corn and pole or runner beans, you need to put them in the farthest part of the garden to avoid shading the shorter plants.
Likewise, plants that don’t like a lot of sun should take the shadier part of the garden. You should also consider staggering plantings by a few weeks if you want a constant supply. This way, you have another lot coming up after every harvest.
©Thompson and Morgan – Plan your vegetable patch before you start planting to get the best results.
Conclusion
Vegetables require regular care. If you are to grow your vegetables successfully, you must be prepared to put in the work in taking care of your plants. Ensure that you are weeding, pruning, and watering your veggies as required – but with proper care and attention you can enjoy the flavour of your own home grown crops.
Since I was a kid, I always found myself in the kitchen whenever there was something cooking. Even though none from the family was occupied with cooking as a profession, my mother was very fond of cooking and baking. She actually was the one that sparked my motivation and love for the kitchen. I grew up believing that the dinner table is that safe bubble for the family after long and dynamic days, my mother’s meals always brought us together. Seeing that, my parents got me into cooking classes which made me fall even more in love with it. I continued to chase this dream of mine through the years. I’ve been working with a local restaurant for 4 years now, as I am also about to finish my culinary studies. There’s nothing that makes me more happy than seeing people who put in practice and enjoy my advice. Such, I also take joy in sharing my tips with audiences via guest posting from time to time.
In essence, sustainable gardening is not a new term, but the practice has started gaining traction recently. What gardening sustainably means, what does the process involve, and what makes it so important today?
Julia Thatcher is a journalist who has dedicated to sustainable horticulture and organic gardening once she got married and moved to a rural area to join her husband. The environmental awareness is strong in this one as much as her love for organic smoothies.
There’s certainly an art to orchestrating your garden. Learning about which flowering plants work well together or which are incompatible due to their unique growth conditions is the key to creating gorgeous and harmonious combinations in your yard.
Below are several examples of flowers you should avoid planting near one another, which prove just how important it is to pay attention to your plant tags.
Wisteria trees, billowing roses and lavender framing the meandering stone pathway, and beautiful ivy growing up the walls of the house – It was nanny Davis’s overflowing cottage garden that created the plant lover I am today. I’ve come a long way from helping her pick those graffiti-petaled beauties for her glass vase in the old days. Working as a consulting horticulturist, today I have the opportunity to put my sharpened floral arranging and designing techniques to great use, transforming people’s gardens and patios into spaces of their dreams.
Some of the best plants for curb appeal are both attractive and low-maintenance, making them ideal for part-time gardeners who are also full-time plant lovers. Use this fact to your advantage, whatever your reason for sprucing up your curb. Your front yard will return the investment manifold in the coming days.
Plan before you plant
Take a good look at your front yard before you start digging and planting around. Making a gardening plan is a crucial phase in every project, and improving your curb appeal is no different. Most importantly, ask yourself what you want to achieve. Do you want a low-upkeep, year-round green front yard or a breathtaking curb that will help you sell your home for top dollar? Pick the plants from our list that best suit your short or long-term plans.
1. Rhododendrons and Azaleas
These cousins will enrich your front yard either with their showy, gently fragrant flowers or leathery green leaves. The shrubs come as deciduous or evergreen. The Rhododendron genus offers us hundreds of varieties, but some of the most cherished are ‘Moerheim’ and ‘Madame Galle’.
2. Bougainvillaea
What may surprise you about this evergreen, shrubby vine is that its variety of colours is only surpassed by the number of landscaping uses. Bougainvillaeas are among the best plants for curb appeal as they can be cultivated as ground cover, a bush, a hedge, short flowering trees or even as a bonsai. In the UK, these half-hardy climbers are best grown in patio pots that can be moved to a frost-free position in winter.
3. Aloe Vera
What better way to break the curviness of your garden than with the spiky Aloe? This succulent will be a great addition to your front yard garden as long as there’s no chance of freezing in the winter. If there is and you need to relocate them, make sure to protect them well so that they can thrive in their new location. In the UK, Aloe ‘Safari Sunrise’ is reasonably hardy, but will appreciate some protection from the worst winter weather.
4. Hosta
These hardy perennials love the shade. Even if your front yard doesn’t receive much sun, that won’t stop the attractive hosta from spreading its luscious foliage and scented flowers.
5. Roses
Rose ‘The Fairy’ is an incredibly free-flowering shrub that blooms beautifully from late summer to autumn, but requires full sun. Its pink flowers, stand out nicely against the dark foliage.
6. Geraniums
Clustering and growing different varieties of Geraniums will provide your curb with the spring to fall colouring. Of all varieties of this perennial, Rozanne’s violet flowers bloom the longest.
7. Mandevilla
Mandevilla or Rocktrumpet is a vine full of impressive dark red, pink or white trumpet-like flowers. It is an excellent choice if you have a trellis that receives at least six hours of sun daily. In the UK, it is best grown as a patio plant in a container so that it can be moved to a frost free location during the winter months.
8. Gerbera Daisies
Gerbera jamesonii is a cheerful, non-stop bloomer that will add brightness to your front yard as only daisy-like flowers can. These long-lasting, attention-grabbing, satiny, colourful flowers will not only brighten your garden but will provide you with seeds for the next season.
9. Chrysanthemums
These rich perennials come in an array of flower forms, sizes, and colours. Rounded mounds of hardier garden chrysanthemums prefer full sun. These easy to grow flowers, will spice up your curb from August to October.
10. Thuja
This lush evergreen will grow quickly and is one of the plants grown on property lines for added privacy. Thuja occidentalis will foster a feeling of security and comfort in your yard year-round and make a perfect canvas for your more colourful plants.
As a child, I couldn’t wait for the summer to visit my grandparents in the country and dabble in horticulture. I had no doubts about my choice of studies when the time came. Currently, I study Agriculture at the Madrid Uni and at my granny’s lab – our little garden. Whenever I get an opportunity, I share my love for plantlife online.
If summer holidays to far-off places feel out of reach right now, maybe it’s time to plan for a holiday at home? Creating a tropical feel on your suburban patio isn’t as far-fetched as it might sound. There are plenty of exotic beauties that will flourish in our cooler climate, but still create that luxuriant leafy feel that will transport you far away on sultry summer days.
Plants and gardens have always been a big part of my life. I can remember helping my Dad to prick out seedlings, even before I could see over the top of the potting bench. As an adult, I trained at Writtle College where I received my degree, BSc. (Hons) Horticulture. After working in a specialist plantsman’s nursery, and later, as a consulting arboriculturalist, I joined Thompson & Morgan in 2008. Initially looking after the grounds and coordinating the plant trials, I now support the web team offering horticultural advice online. I have a keen interest in drought resistant plants and a passion for perennials, particularly hardy Geraniums. I previously stood as regional secretary for the International Plant Propagation Society which gave me lots of opportunities to see what other horticulturalists were up to in their nurseries and gardens.