Thompson & Morgan Gardening Blog

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.

Anyone for cucamelon?

by Caroline Broome | Sep 20, 2016 | A year in the greenhouse, Customer Trial Panel, Flowers, Fruit, Gardening Posts, inspiration for the garden, Petunia Parade, Summer gardening, Vegetables, Your Stories | 8 Comments

So anyway, after two weeks of tropical 30c heat, here we are in mid-September, the rain finally came and the temperature’s dropped to a respectably dull 20c. Great, I think, I can start tidying up for the autumn, and then go on holiday. But when I get outside everything has started greening up and growing again!

Caroline Broome

Caroline Broome has been gardening for more than 20 years. Having passed the RHS General Certificate, she has since developed her East Finchley garden into a “personal paradise” that she and her husband invite the public to visit each year via the National Garden Scheme. Learn more about our contributor using T&M’s ‘Meet the experts’ page.

Wisteria’s wonderful comeback!

by Lesley Palmer | Sep 15, 2016 | Customer Trial Panel, Flowers, Gardening Posts, inspiration for the garden, Spring gardening, Your Stories | 6 Comments

There is no greater sight than the eccentric trusses of soft, pale purple, hanging from a lime green cushioned background? (There probably is but I think it’s a pretty wondrous sight in the month of May). This is a little story of an old, worn out wisteria given a new lease of life in its later years.

Lesley Palmer

I’m a 23 year old female horticulturalist. I studied at Easton College for two years until June 2014 and became self employed providing garden care and design in North Norfolk. I currently care for around 20 gardens and have now achieved a few designs and a small landscaping project.

I am passionate about getting young people, especially primary schools, involved in gardening again. I have a project running to do with children’s gardening, so if you’d like to know more please get in touch! I began because of spending so much time in the garden with my granddad as a child. I was also a member of my primary school’s environment club.

I am a fan of Michael Perry and James Wong and I love finding out about edible flowers and how to live more independently from my own garden.

Dead-head your flowers

by Wendie Alexander | Sep 7, 2016 | Flowers, Fruit, Gardening Posts, inspiration for the garden, Roses, Summer gardening, Wildlife | 2 Comments

This time of year is my favourite in the garden. With the long summer days behind us the light from the sun is not nearly as harsh as it was in June and July. The flowers in the garden are still blooming but with the longer shadows of early evening, it gives them more depth. I wish I could keep this month in the garden all year round! But as that is not possible I try to keep the rich colours of the garden for as long as possible. How to do this you wonder?

I dead-head many of my flowers, to keep them going. By dead-heading you are tricking the plants into believing they are still young. When you allow your plants to seed, they receive a chemical message informing them they no longer need to produce blooms and now is the time to stop. By dead-heading them they continue to enjoy youthfulness and produce their gorgeous blooms for a while longer. Of course this does not continue indefinitely, but it does provide you with colours until the end of the month.

Penstemon ‘Strawberries and Cream, Phlox ‘David’ and Poppy ‘Bridal White’

Which plants can be dead-headed and which are best left to seed? I have always found my Penstemon ‘Strawberries and Cream’ will continue to produce its flowers in September. With a gentle dead-heading I continue to enjoy the pink and white flushes of colour. Other plants include Phlox paniculata ‘David’ and Pennisetum alopecoroides.

To dead-head softer stemmed plants, all you need to do is nip the flowers between thumb and forefinger once the flowers are finished. This will work for geraniums, petunias, cosmos and chrysanthemums.

Pennisetum ‘Alopecoroides’

However, some plants need a little more encouragement and to dead-head you will need to get the secateurs and cut back to the stem to the next shoot down. This applies to roses and dahlias; my Rose ‘Racquel’ has responded well to this and is still happily flowering.

Nigella ‘Delft Blue’ Seed Head and Poppy Seed Heads

There are plenty of my plants that I have not dead-headed, because they do not respond too well to it. Poppy ‘Bridal White’ is having its last flush of flowers and then it will be going to seed. The seed heads create an unusual backdrop for the remaining flowers in my garden. I am also leaving my Nigella ‘Delft Blue’, the seed heads are a show stopper all of their own. The few grasses I have such as the Verbena bonariensis are also going to seed. The insects really like living here and I don’t want to disturb them while they are happy!

Speaking of happy, don’t forget to let your Fuchsia FUCHSIABERRY go to seed, they will go on to provide you with an abundance of berries for jams and puddings. They are delicious…

So there you are, a bit more work and you have a lot more flowers.

Wendie Alexander

I have worked for Thompson & Morgan for nearly four years. In that time I have learnt lots about gardening, but consider myself very much a novice. I have started growing veg on a colleague’s allotment and also growing windowsill seeds such as Salad Leaves and Rocket. I love gaining more knowledge about horticulture and am lucky enough to work here.

Making Hypertufa

by Graham Ward | Aug 23, 2016 | Gardening Posts, inspiration for the garden | 12 Comments

Many years ago I remember watching the great Geoff Hamilton on Gardener’s World making “fake rocks” from something called hypertufa and even though I was too young at the time to do it myself I always recall wanting to try it when I was a grown up.

I’m not quite sure I’ve ever actually “grown up” but I do love my garden and I also love trying to be creative, successfully or otherwise, it doesn’t matter, as long as I’ve had a go!

With that in mind, a few years ago I made my first batch of hypertufa, I made pots, used boxes for moulds and actually was quite pleased with the results, I have moved a few times since then and the pots either got left behind, or broken so it was about time I made some more!

The recipe

There are various mixtures all over the internet, I used 2 parts cement to 3 parts compost and 3 parts perlite, you can add some synthetic strengthening fibres to the mix but as I was only making small scale so I didn’t need them. If you are planning on making something huge then they would be a good idea to stop it breaking when you lift it.

2 parts cement
3 parts perlite
3 parts compost

As with any cement mix, add water and thoroughly combine the materials – the important thing with hypertufa is not to make it too wet! If your mixture is sloppy then it will crumble back to dust when it dries and all your hard work will be wasted! A consistency of clay is almost ideal, if you hold a handful, squeeze it and let go, it should hold it’s shape without falling apart or oozing between your fingers. (I should have worn gloves by the way)

Moulding and making

The mix was ready and I had found a few things to use as moulds for the first few pots, one of them was an old glass kitchen lampshade which was going to make a nice shallow bowl, I covered it with cling film – to make sure it didn’t stick later on – and started pressing handfuls of the mix inside it, starting near the middle and working my way out, I tried to make it about an inch thick all the way around until I had covered the inside completely.

I also used an old sweet tin (sprayed inside with WD40 to stop any sticking) a small cardboard box, a fruit box and, bizarrely, I decided to fill up a latex glove with the mixture too to see what it came out like and I also made a small, free-form, shallow container too

Patience is now vital, I covered over the various pots and troughs and left them for nearly a week to completely dry out, I’m not usually this patient but I knew that to interfere with them now would probably break the things I made and mess them up completely.

It was worth the wait, with only one mishap – my tub of builders PVA came in handy at this point..

Further waiting followed to let them cure even more, however, this was a good time to go out and buy lots of lovely plants to put in them!

I chose alpines including Sempervivum, saxifrage, mazus and delosperma, that will all look good in this particular setting, all being low growing ground cover type plants. They are low maintenance plants, making them ideal for a beginner too!

I planted up some of the pots I had made, using ordinary multi-purpose compost but not using any additional feeds etc, top dressing it all with a silver grit finished off the look nicely and I found a few large “rocks” to decorate the top a little.

Overall I’m very pleased with the result and the plants are already filling out nicely and looking very “natural” in their new homes.

Graham Ward

I’ve been gardening for as long as I can remember, my first earliest memory being planting seeds in my Grandfather’s prestige flower bed and having a prize lettuce growing there, which he proudly left to show everyone.

Since then, gaining knowledge and experience from both my Grandfather and my Father, I’ve continued to garden, both as a hobby and later on as a professional gardener and landscaper for 12 years. I love all aspects of it, from the design and build, to the planting out of summer borders with plants you’ve either grown from seed or raised from plugs. Unusual varieties always catch my eye and I’m keen to try growing them, even if sometimes it means learning from my mistakes.

Acer Starfish

by Karen Pratt | Aug 22, 2016 | Gardening Posts, Your Stories | 7 Comments

I’ve got a medium sized garden and have spent the past year trying to transform it from a concrete mess, to something I can sit and relax in. I’ll paint a picture of what I’m dealing with; there are two rectangular borders with good quality soil in and a large square area in the middle too. They’re surrounded by uneven patio areas and a concrete monster at the back. Unfortunately it’s not an easy task to just remove the mess at the back of the garden, so I’m working my way from the front until I can sort out the back.

Karen Pratt

Karen works in the Customer Care Department at Thompson and Morgan assisting customers in their orders and gardening queries. After growing up watching her dad and granddad in the garden, she is now keen to improve her own gardening knowledge and expertise. Karen likes to try out new and quirky ideas in the garden, and appreciates any tips or advice!

Summer At Last…

by Jean Willis | Aug 16, 2016 | Customer Trial Panel, Flowers, Gardening Posts | 3 Comments

Hello Gardeners,

I hope you are all enjoying the summer and your plants have all behaved as they should.

On returning from a four day break in Maastricht to see Andre Rieu in live concert and a tour of his Castle it was down to business checking how the garden had done in my absence. Just a bit of tidying and moving containers but thankfully no disasters.

This year my Hydrangea ‘Annabelle’ has been beautiful and very upright, in other years it has wanted to lay on other plants but this year is the fourth year I have had it in the garden and I have been very pleased with it and the blooms are huge. The Sun Diascia Eternal Flame have flowered freely, although I have noticed that although there was supposed to be three colours, orange, pink and white it turns out that there was no white in my pack,, but nevertheless have proved to be very successful. I do wish I had actually planted them into the garden instead of a container as they would have looked great in a border.

Jean and her Hydrangea ‘Annabelle’ plant

I bought a container, saucer and round trellis as a set from Thompson & Morgan and planted the ‘GeRainbow™ Mixed’ geraniums in it and have encouraged them to climb, so far so good, they have now reached the top of the first section. I also bought Fuchsia ‘Pink Fizz’ which are in a container with a frame and the fuchsias are doing well, having reached about 3 feet. Another success this year that I have been thrilled with are the Apricot Shade Begonia corms that I have dried from last year. I put them in a large tray in the house (no central heating) and they started to shoot towards the end of January. I then planted them into compost to bring them on gradually. I ended up transplanting them into a large trough, probably too many in one trough but I wasn`t sure if they were all going to actually succeed. I believe they must have as they appear to be cramped but don`t seem to mind it. Thankfully they are in one of the containers that on the drip system so they get watered regularly. At first, I thought the front garden of containers was going to be a great disappointment as against other years. Everything was taking so long to get going, then we had high winds and rain which kept knocking everything down again, – then – what a miracle when we got a really warm spell in June almost overnight everything was transformed, the flowers lifted their heads and everything was alright with the world!

Apricot Shade Begonias and Geranium ‘GeRainbow™ Mixed’

I have quite a lot of Petunia ‘Night Sky’ and used one Easy Fill Hanging Basket and underneath the basket I had a triple stand which I filled with the `Night Sky`. I did understand that they would trail as described in the first summer brochure but on emailing Michael discovered that they didn`t officially trail (this was corrected in the following brochure) but did grow over the sides and also made a good effort to trail. They have been quite a talking point to passersby especially as they always seems to be changing their white flecks on the purple.

On Thursday 4th August we visited the Thompson & Morgan open day at Jimmy`s Farm in Ipswich, Suffolk. My Husband Alan and my 16 year old Grandson Jack had already arrived in Ipswich to have a few days looking around. On arrival at Jimmy`s Farm, we were met by Michael Perry. Alan and Jack went for a tour of the farm while I made my way down to the marquee in the grounds to meet other people who do the trials and also members of Thompson & Morgan who we all knew by name but then put faces to the names.

Flower Plants at the Thompson & Morgan Open Garden at Jimmy’s Farm

After an introduction, we had a tour of the grounds where the trial plants were growing and also hanging baskets and containers. It was interesting to see that even there with the professionals they seem to get similar problems that we encounter in our gardens. We were able to take photos, ask questions and make notes. I took photos of some of the plants that I would like to try next year; I did particularly like the new idea of having three plants together that fill a basket. I like the idea of the three fuchsias together and hope they will be available for next summer. We went back to the marquee where we had a cream tea and cakes, and lots of chat to our newfound friends. Thank you Michael and staff for arranging the tea that I know we all enjoyed and were thankful.

After saying our `goodbyes until next time` we were given a bag full of goodies, vegetable and flower seeds – just makes me want to get started all over again – Incredicrop® fertiliser and three plants, Blechnum ‘Volcano’, Viburnum ‘Kilimanjaro Sunrise’ and Sambucus ‘Black Tower’. I am really looking forward to seeing these grow over the course of next year and the future. As we were staying in a hotel until the Saturday, I took the plants out of their box and used the top of my craft box to fill with water so I could water them and kept them in the cool of the bathroom. They all arrived home safe and sound and are now looking good in their new coloured pots.

Blechnum ‘Volcano’, Viburnum ‘Kilimanjaro Sunrise’ and Sambucus ‘Black Tower’

As we are reaching the middle of August and already the evenings are drawing in, I hope we all get many more happy sunny gardening days to enjoy before we have to think about winter. Keep safe and well everyone, until the next time… To learn how to grow your own Hydrangea ‘Annabelle’, head over to our hydrangea hub page for top care tips and planting recommendations.

Jean Willis

I started gardening 65 years ago on my Dad’s allotment and now live in Bournemouth, where spend a lot of time gardening since retiring. In 2012 I won the Gold Award for Bournemouth in Bloom Container Garden. I am a member of Thompson & Morgan’s customer trial panel.

Thompson & Morgan’s Customer Triallists Open Day

by Caroline Broome | Aug 11, 2016 | Flowers, Gardening News, Gardening Posts, Your Stories | 2 Comments

For what seemed like the first time in months David and I dared to step away from the garden for a day out: a trip to Ipswich to visit Thompson & Morgan’s triallists’ Open Day. Coming up from North London is a two hour drive so, seeing as it was sunny and warm, we decided to make a day of it and visit Jimmy’s Farm beforehand. Hordes of happy toddlers and young parents enjoying the school holidays and – us! Oh well, it brings out your inner child doesn’t it?

Caroline Broome

Vacuuming The Pebbles

by Caroline Broome | Aug 8, 2016 | Customer Trial Panel, Flowers, Fruit, Gardening News, Gardening Posts, Vegetables, Your Stories | 6 Comments

If you were circling North London on 16th July in a helicopter (and why wouldn’t you be?) you would have witnessed a curious phenomenon – gardeners of the Hampstead Garden Suburb on their hands and knees vacuuming their plots – the London Gardens’ Society judges were on their way! Now don’t get me wrong, we are not at loggerheads over this, indeed we have been referred to as a formidable bunch (also the Witches of Eastwick but I digress) and are at great pains to reassure each other that we are not competitive, but – well, if you believe that you will believe anything. One of us usually gets mentioned in dispatches so if you work on the theory of reflected glory then we are all winners.

Caroline Broome

Katy’s The Good Life in Practice

by Katy Runacres | Jul 27, 2016 | Customer Trial Panel, Expert Update, Flowers, Fruit, Gardening Posts, inspiration for the garden, Summer gardening, Vegetables, Your Stories | 0 Comments

An update from The Good Life In Practice:

So a lot has been happening in the growing season these last few months! The weather has got truly warmer and the rain has indeed helped the plants to push on. Here is a quick round up of what has been happening here…

Katy Runacres

Katy is a smallholder, cook and writer. She keeps Chickens, Bantams, Meat Rabbits and has a resident cat called Podge. She takes an interest in all aspects of homesteading and has written pieces for a number of magazines including Backwoods Home, Bushcraft, Country Smallholding, Home Farmer and Smallholder. Katy is a member of the Essex and Suffolk Poultry Club and has a Diploma in Countryside Management.

Summer Gardening

by Amanda Davies | Jul 26, 2016 | A year in the greenhouse, Customer Trial Panel, Flowers, Gardening Posts, inspiration for the garden, Petunia Parade, Summer gardening, Your Stories | 0 Comments

Hello Everyone,

Hope you are all well, and enjoying the beautiful summer days. Our weather in Neyland has been erratic, if there’s one thing we can bet on at the moment is that there are no two days the same. If it’s not twenty seven degrees Celsius and cloudless it’s foggy, damp humid and uncomfortable. Oh and don’t forget the heavy rain, thunder and winds. The poor plants have taken a battering. Although luckily for me most have bounced back, it’s only Petunia ‘Anna’ that seems to be struggling.

Amanda Davies

My name is Amanda and I live in Pembrokeshire with my fiancé and our garden is approximately 116 meters square. I want to share with you my love for gardening and the reasons behind it, from the good to the bad and ugly. I want to do this for my own personal pleasure. If you would like to take the journey with me then please read my blogs and share with me your gardening stories.

Thompson & Morgan Gardening Blog

Anyone for cucamelon?

Wisteria’s wonderful comeback!

Dead-head your flowers

Making Hypertufa

Acer Starfish

Summer At Last…

Thompson & Morgan’s Customer Triallists Open Day

Vacuuming The Pebbles

Katy’s The Good Life in Practice

Summer Gardening

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