Thompson & Morgan Gardening Blog

Dahlias blaze into colour just as other flowers are going over.
Image source: Shutterstock

After weeks of hot summer days, the grass is brown and withered, the summer raspberries have shrivelled into dessicated husks and the roses have gone over, but my dahlias are only just beginning. We’ve had the first brazenly crimson flower on ‘Con Amore’.

I’ve just started reading the sumptuous monograph ‘Dahlias’ by Naomi Slade, published earlier this month, and now I’m impatient to convert my dahlia dreaming into reality. I came to dahlias quite late in the day after picking up a few tubers of the charismatic Dahlia ‘Firepot’ at the school fete and I’ve been hooked ever since. They’re such a versatile flower – working equally well in mixed borders, containers or as bedding plants. Last year I also grew dahlias in the vegetable patch, and used the blooms for cut flowers.

Cut flowers

‘Café au lait’ is a favourite for cut flower arrangements.
Image source: Nic Wilson

My favourites include the sophisticated duo ‘Henriette’ and ‘Café au Lait’. ‘Henriette’ is a semi-cactus washed with apricot tones and ‘Café au Lait’, a double decorative with a soft pink blush which Naomi Slade describes as ‘rich as a cream liqueur on ice’.

Their elegant flowers last well in arrangements – either as an off-white display or mixed with the deep burgundy shades of ‘Thomas A. Edison’ and ‘Downham Royal’. These darker dahlias also create fiery contrasts with the neon punctuation of ‘New Baby’ and burnished orange of ‘David Howard’. Growing flowers in these three tonal ranges allows me to create harmony and contrast in different rooms as the mood takes me.

Borders

‘Bishop of Llandaff’ brings a striking scarlet accent to your borders.
Image source: Thompson & Morgan

Dahlias bring extra colour to late summer borders and their foliage is a valuable addition even before the flowers, especially with the rich chocolate purples and greens of the Bishop Series. If I could only grow one dahlia, it would be ‘Bishop of Canterbury’ – it has the same dark foliage as the more popular ‘Bishop of Llandaff’, but with luscious magenta-pink flowers.

For a more elegant border dahlia, ‘Twynings After Eight’ retains the dark chocolate foliage alongside single white flowers with a saturated yellow central boss.

Containers and bedding

The smaller dahlia ‘Scura’ is ideal for containers.
Image source: Nic Wilson

Smaller dahlias are well suited to container growing and bedding displays. For punchy colour try ‘Scura’, one of the Mini Bishop Group, which has deep orange petals with apricot undertones, or ‘Happy Single Date’ with its cheerful tangerine flowers flushed with red at the centre.

‘Fire and Ice’ creates its own contrast with vibrant red and white striped flowers on sturdy plants and you can’t beat the semi-double flowers of ‘Sunny Reggae’ in all shades from buttery apricot through to vivid red to liven up any area of the garden.

Dahlia care

Dahlia ‘Happy single date’ is easily accessible to bees in a wildlife-friendly garden.
Image source: Nic Wilson

Whether you’re planting dahlia tubers in containers from late winter/early spring or in the ground after the last frosts, they need little attention apart from feeding and comprehensive defense against the gastropodic arts. I begin all my tubers in containers – this year’s spring rain (hard to remember now) attracted the slugs and snails who wreaked havoc on the emerging shoots. My normal barriers of copper tape and wool pellets proved futile and I had to resort to placing all the dahlias on the patio table with copper tape circling each leg.

The plants need liquid feeding throughout the growing season – a high nitrogen feed initially, followed by a high potassium feed when they start flowering. Once autumn frosts begin in earnest, lift the tubers, cut back the stems and dry upside down before storing in sand or compost in a frost-free place. In milder areas, tubers can be left in the ground and well mulched with compost, manure or straw.  Most years this works for me, with occasional losses in particularly wet, cold winters.

Anticipation

‘Thomas Edison’ is a beautiful addition to cut flower displays.
Image source: Nic Wilson

In the next few weeks I’ll be waiting impatiently for ‘Karma Choc’ and ‘Daisy Duke’ to flower, both new for me this year. And I’m already planning my dahlia selection for 2019. How can I resist just a few tubers of ‘Sierra Glow’ – described by Naomi Slade as the “most gorgeous bronze, brushed with coppery pink and with hints of dusty rose”? I suspect, with tens of thousands of cultivars available, I’ll be indulging in dahlia dreaming for many years to come.

If Nic’s article inspired you, learn how to grow & care for your own dahlias using our dahlia hub page – T&M’s one stop shop for everything you need to know about growing dahlias.

Nic Wilson

Nic Wilson is an author, editor and Guardian Country Diarist based in North Hertfordshire. Her debut nature memoir, Land Beneath the Waves, was published in June by Summersdale/Hachette.

Nic works for BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine and her writing has featured in numerous journals and magazines including The English Garden, The Garden (RHS Magazine), BBC Wildlife Magazine and the John Clare Society Journal. She enjoys growing flowers and unusual fruit, vegetables and herbs, and loves to encourage nature into the garden. Nic volunteers with her local Wildlife Trust.

www.nicwilson.co.uk

The root structure of the date palm is a thing of beauty.
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham

Gardening could be described as bending nature to our will. It’s the selection, planting, shaping, pruning, training, pollinating, pinching, grafting, thinning out and harvesting of plants to suit our requirements. But what happens above the ground is only the tip of the iceberg – half the story. How much more goes on beneath the earth that we never get to see?

The root anatomy of an alpine strawberry.
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham

In a recent study, a team at the University of Nottingham were curious to find out. Using cutting-edge imaging techniques (and a pile of seeds from Thompson & Morgan) they investigated a variety of plant roots without having to dig them up. The results are out of this world!

For the first time, these X-ray CT images showcase the diversity and complexity of plant root systems in their undisturbed soil environment. What no-one was expecting, is just how strikingly beautiful these images of everyday plants, vegetables and flowers actually are.

Why study plant roots?

A study of the grapevine.
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham

Producing safe, nutritious food to feed the world’s growing population is a huge challenge for the future. We need to develop new, resilient crops, and do do that, we need better knowledge.

When we properly understand how plants grow, and have identified how specific features (e.g. root depth, thickness, angle or number of lateral roots) can be improved, this knowledge can be applied to allow more efficient food production. Particularly in regions with limited water or nutrient supply.

Finding out what happens beneath the soil could help eliminate hunger and famine around the globe. But in the quest for scientific breakthrough, it’s the beauty and resilience of nature that has been revealed in these never-before seen images – the secret life of plants.

Check out the full directory of images of plant root systems at The Hidden Half website, and follow their Twitter feed at @UoNHiddenHalf to get updates on their work. But for now, just scroll down and enjoy some of the incredible pictures the boffins have shared with us.

The root anatomy of an alpine strawberry.
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham

Congo grass roots 
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham

The growth of a date palm root
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham

Three distinct root structures of a freesia alba
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham

The cross section of the primary root of a freesia alba
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham

The cross section of a maize crown root
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham 

A pea plant’s root structure.
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham 

A full picture of a Norway Spruce
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham  

Spinach root structure with its main tap root highlighted
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham 

Cross section of a tomato root
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham 

Cross section of a sugar beet’s primary root
Image source: The Hidden Half project, University of Nottingham 

In an ever changing gardening world, everyone is looking for both short term and long term drivers which we use to shape the way that we British gardeners use our outdoor spaces.

We took a look at what we at T&M thought would be the top 10 trends for 2019:

1. Hot colours and cold hardiness

Our customers are increasingly looking to add the tropical or temperate touch to the garden. Perhaps as a result of tightening purse strings and less foreign holidays, we’re seeing more interest in both seasonal summer exotics and hardy plants with an exotic feel to them. Perhaps it’s just the hot weather this summer.
• Great examples of seasonal summer display plants that may need to be brought indoors during winter, or protected from frosts – thunbergia, mandevilla, cobaea, glory lily, palms, banana, jacobinia (Brazilian Fuchsia).
• Other plants that have an exoctic look or feel to them but actually hardy in our British climate – lewisia, Campsis ‘Indian Summer’, Fatsia japonica, bamboo, palms, alstroemeria, gerbera.
• Houseplants that always feel exotic year round – Bird of Paradise and Parrot Plant (Impatiens niamniamensis), citrus.

2. Extending summer

With cold starts to the past few seasons, our customers are looking to make the most of warm weather moving into autumn. Many of our recent summer introductions look to tackle this by having much longer flowering periods, to maximise garden enjoyment for our customers:
SunBelievable™; new rudbeckias; renewed focus on dahlias – all flowering into November or the first hard frosts of autumn.

3. Wabi sabi

Wabi sabi is the art of imperfect beauty; appreciating imperfections in life and the ability to age gracefully (shabby chic). In the garden, this translates as a delicate balance between nature and nurture – a natural feel in the garden yet with a design edge. Thompson & Morgan’s seed scatter boxes work well in this concept as whilst there is a “random” element to the seed distribution, there is also a uniformness in the fact that the varieties have been carefully chosen to suit the desire effect. Our Perennial collections have a similar, though slightly more formal feel to them, giving a wider range of heights, colours and textures in a flower bed.

4. Grow your own protein

The vegan movement has gained momentum on social media and in wider media in the past 12 months, becoming more widely recognised as a way of living in the mainstream society. This, alongside the issue of how we sustainably feed the world’s fast-rising population has led to a shift to high protein veg as an alternative to meat.

Good examples of veg that are high in protein are: Peas, spinach, kale, broccoli, sprouts, mushrooms and globe artichokes.

5. Purple reigns

The health properties of purple vegetables continue  to appeal, usually being higher in anti-oxidants and vitamins as well as having “plate appeal” in restaurants too.

Varieties to look out for include:

• Pea Shiraz
• Carrot Purple Sun
• Cabbage Red Jewel
• Radish Diana
• Potato Salad Blue
• Brussels Sprout Red Bull
• Tomato Indigo Cherry Drops
• Sprouting Broccoli Summer Purple

6. Generation rent

With more and more people now choosing to live in rented accomodation, we’re seeing an uplift in houseplants and ‘take-away’ garden containers that can easily be transported to a new property, conatinerised plants are also much easier to rearrgange according to colour schemes, seasonal changes etc
• New this season we have introduced is a full range of house plants to help our customers that are looking into indoor gardening
• Alongside this we have increased the number of pre-planted pots and baskets we have available to our customers, alongside our garden ready plants, which are ideal for planting straight into pots and baskets too
• Shrubs and perennials ideal for containers have also been on the rise, again these can be grown in a large pot and transported easily to a new home without the risk ofloosing an established plant grown in the ground and uprooting it.– more compact forms of garden favourites are; Lavatera ‘Barnsley Baby’ and Buddleja ‘Buzz’™.

7. Climate gardening

David Wolfe, Department of Horticulture at Cornell University said:

“We are in the unfortunate situation of being the first generation of gardeners ever, who cannot rely on historical weather records to tell us what our climate is, or what to expect in the future.”

Our customers are increasingly realising that we need to work with what we’ve got and are asking for planting solutions for;

• Wind-swept gardens
• Longer periods of heat/drought
• Extended periods of wet/rain
• Extreme cold/frost

Summer bedding needs to withstand drought, but also be able to bounce back after summer down-pours – deeming it “weatherproof”
Spring bedding must be able to cope with increasingly poor winters.
Our hardy nursery stock has to cope with all these factors.
As such, all our new T&M plant introductions are tested for their suitability to variable UK conditions, with the above four factors in mind.

8. Under cover gardeners

Again, off the back of more unpredictable weather patterns, we at Thompson & Morgan are seeing increased use of greenhouses, cloches and cold frames in our customer gardens to help level out climate and environment. These help regulate temperatures for crops such as tomatoes and cucumbers an make pleasant environments to garden in too!

9. Stress relief

By 2030, anxiety will be the number one health issue, outranking obesity. A recent survey by Ypulse shows 81% of 18-34 years old are making mental health a priority, looking for new ways to balance physical and mental wellness via ‘digital detox’. Switching off the technology and getting outside.
Gardening and plants can play a big part in mental wellness. Being surrounded by air-purifying plants, creating a quiet tranquil space, eating a plant-based diet are all reflections of wellness trends that have become status symbols for people who make health a priority.

10. Living Social Network

The concept of companion planting (eg. growing marigolds with tomatoes to keep whitefly away) has moved on from plant pairing to viewing planting schemes as a living ‘social network’ rather than a collection of
individual plants. Creating symbiosis between plants puts the focus on garden design and management rather than time-consuming garden maintenance.
For example:
• Low-growing evergreen grasses being grown as a green mulch to reduce watering and weeding.
• Planting nitrogen fixing plants such as lupins to fix nitrogen and feed soil (and using green manures in general).
• Planting taller plants in gardens to create shade and shelter for smaller additions.
• Growing scented flowers to keep pests away and others to attract beneficial insects and also to help the environment by encouraging bees and butterflies.
• Further symbiotic link with the use of mycorrhizal fungi, with research now showing ‘communication’ and transfer of nutrients, plant to plant, carried by fungi.

Kris Collins

Kris Collins works as Thompson & Morgan’s quality control manager, making sure customers new and old are kept up to date on the latest plant developments and company news via a wide range of media sources. He trained in London’s Royal Parks and has spent more than a decade writing for UK gardening publications before joining the team at Thompson & Morgan.