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Amanda’s update – March, mowers and sowing seeds

by Amanda Davies | Apr 5, 2017 | A year in the greenhouse, Flowers, Gardening Posts, Spring gardening, Vegetables, Your Stories | 0 Comments

Hello Gardeners,

Hope you are all well and making progress in your gardens. I recently remembered an old saying that goes “A dry March and a wet May, fills barns and bays with corn and hay. I don’t know if it’s true but we seem to have a lot of corn sprouting up under our bird feeding station thanks to the House Sparrows throwing it out of the feeders. Usually the Collard Doves or the Wood Pigeons eat it, but they have missed some of the grains.

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.

Potting on tomato plants

by Theresa Bloomfield | Mar 23, 2017 | Flowers, Gardening Posts, Pests & Diseases, Spring gardening, Vegetables, Your Stories | 2 Comments

I have just potted on thirty six tomato seedlings of seven varieties. Mountain Magic for its blight resistance, Country Taste for those big tasty fruits, Sweet Aperitif and Sungold for the delicious little mouthfuls, Red Alert a bush tomato that fruits very early on the bench outside and San Marzano for the best tasting pasta sauce to see me through the year.

Theresa Bloomfield

I have had my hands in soil ever since I could crawl. I remember well going out into the garden and watching my Father double digging the vegetable plot and being shown how to pick caterpillars off the brassicas. You could say he was an early organic gardener. There was something nice about sneaking round behind the outhouse and pulling rhubarb and dipping it in sugar, picking raspberries and stuffing handfuls into my mouth. It is these memories of taste and smell that never leave you and make you want to grow your own fresh fruit and vegetables.

It has been something of a treat then, to find myself working for Thompson and Morgan for the past 13 years and being able to help customers to solve their gardening problems

Chickens, slugs and clearing up the vegetable plot

by Theresa Bloomfield | Mar 16, 2017 | Gardening Posts, Vegetables, Winter gardening, Your Stories | 1 Comment

The vegetable garden is looking a little sorry for itself at the moment. The last of the winter roots and leeks and brassicas are waiting to be harvested and there are a few weeds showing now. Nothing that a dry, sunny winters day cannot sort out. I have heavy clay soil so I use long planks resting on the side of the raised beds to work on to prevent compacting the soil, which has had some good productive frosts this year breaking up the clods.

Theresa Bloomfield

I have had my hands in soil ever since I could crawl. I remember well going out into the garden and watching my Father double digging the vegetable plot and being shown how to pick caterpillars off the brassicas. You could say he was an early organic gardener. There was something nice about sneaking round behind the outhouse and pulling rhubarb and dipping it in sugar, picking raspberries and stuffing handfuls into my mouth. It is these memories of taste and smell that never leave you and make you want to grow your own fresh fruit and vegetables.

It has been something of a treat then, to find myself working for Thompson and Morgan for the past 13 years and being able to help customers to solve their gardening problems

Anyone out there looking for left hand gloves?

by Caroline Broome | Mar 8, 2017 | Flowers, Gardening Posts, Perennials, Spring gardening, Wildlife, Your Stories | 1 Comment

Why oh why don’t they make gardening gloves reversible? Being right handed I have a drawer full of superfluous intact left hand gloves as all my right hand ones get ripped and worn with monotonous regularity. As I value my nails I opt to double glove, that is, to don surgical gloves first (well, I do come from a medical family) followed by fine weave gardening gloves with reinforced palms and fingers. I find this way I can actually feel what I am doing! But it seems such a waste to throw a whole pair away just because one glove has had it. So if there are any dainty size 6½ left handed gardeners out there in need of spares please do get in touch!

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.

My first T&M blog…….

by Julie Quinn | Mar 7, 2017 | Flowers, Fruit, Gardening Posts, inspiration for the garden, Summer gardening, Your Stories | 5 Comments

Hello Everyone. This is my first blog for T&M and I approached them because I want to try something new and grow something edible in my vastly overcrowded cottage garden.

We live in a 1920’s terrace house in North London and have a cottage garden front and back. We feel very fortunate to have a long front garden path and a back garden big enough to eat out in.

This is how it looked in 1988 when we moved in.

Julie Quinn

I love the cottage garden style – it affects me emotionally where other styles I can admire and enjoy but they might not move me. Now in my sixties I only started gardening at 40 when we moved to our house with a front and back garden. To see what it looked like then and now you might like to look at my blog at www.Londoncottagegarden.com
We look out on it every single day so this garden needs to lift our hearts all year round. It teeters between abundant fabulousness and chaos. My gardening efforts aim to keep that balance but I’m against trying to control too much. I control other areas of my life but the garden gives me a place to let go and leave things alone to do their own thing.

My inspirations began with Geoff Hamilton on TV as well as Dan Pearson on TV and Anna Pavord in print. I learned some basics by trial and error and by working alongside professional gardeners who helped me. I found my style by visiting other gardens both grand ones around the south of England and local NGS ones here in North London who might share the same soil and conditions.

I look forward to sharing with you our garden through the year.

londoncottagegarden.com/

Y Mis Bach – The little month

by Amanda Davies | Mar 2, 2017 | A year in the greenhouse, Flowers, Gardening Posts, Vegetables, Your Stories | 2 Comments

Hello Gardeners,

Hope you are all well. I’m writing this from the comfort of my living room as Storm Doris rages across the UK. Luckily there is no damage to the greenhouses but our rotary washing line has snapped in two.

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.

How to Choose The Best Plants to Compliment Your Pond

by Linda Firth | Feb 22, 2017 | Gardening Posts, inspiration for the garden, water features, Your Stories | 0 Comments

Getting the right balance of plants is essential for a healthy and thriving pond habitat.

To achieve good visual interest, you may wish to consider getting a combination of foliage and flowers sitting at different levels in and around your pond; bearing in mind that most plants only flower for a few months out of the year.

It is therefore useful to take a note of the height or planting depth, spread, and flowering season of your favourite varieties of pond plant, in order to plan effectively.

You will also need to calculate the pond surface area and depth, to avoid overcrowding, and to ensure that the plants grow to the perfect height in the water.

The positioning of plants is a crucial aspect and will depend on the plant type.

Linda Firth

Linda Firth is a keen gardener and owner of a mature garden with a fish pond. She runs the Lifestyle blog for LoveMyVouchers.co.uk, where she documents and shares her gardening experiences and insights.

Surprising Household Products That Benefit Your Garden

by Clive Harris | Feb 20, 2017 | Gardening Posts, inspiration for the garden, Your Stories | 2 Comments

Reduce, reuse, recycle- it’s a phrase that has been drummed into everyone in the last decade. Repurposing in the garden is a hot trend at the moment, and saving money isn’t the only benefit. Your garden is an ecological haven, so it makes sense to use natural products wherever possible, keeping harsh chemical fertilizers and pesticides to a minimum (something also worth bearing in mind if you have little hands helping out).

Clive Harris

Having loved the great outdoors since he was a kid, Clive has always enjoyed being creative in the garden. This and a passion for writing helped bring DIY Garden to life; his own personal gardening blog to share ideas and inspire others. A Garden Media Guide member, Clive lives just outside of London with his beautiful wife Tamara and their children.

diygarden.co.uk/about

Dance, Dance, Dance!

by Graham Ward | Feb 10, 2017 | Flowers, Gardening Posts, inspiration for the garden, Your Stories | 2 Comments

Many people at work here at T&M know that I am an avid dancer, I’ve even encouraged a few others from my office to come along and try Ceroc (the dance I love to do) and they’ve enjoyed it too!
This got me thinking recently, as I start to plan out my garden pots for this year; why not have a section dedicated to dance, after all, if I can combine my two passions, dancing and gardening then surely I’ve got the best of both worlds?

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.

Thompson & Morgan Triallist’s Blog – February 2017

by Caroline Broome | Feb 8, 2017 | Customer Trial Panel, Flowers, Gardening Posts, Your Stories | 2 Comments

January? Where did that go?

So it’s February already and there’s been precious little activity going on of the horticultural variety! I can’t remember a year when frost was so heavy and so prolonged. The water features and borders were frozen solid for a fortnight, although mercifully not much rainfall to drown the perennials in their beds.

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.

Posts from expert gardeners just like you!

Amanda’s update – March, mowers and sowing seeds

Potting on tomato plants

Chickens, slugs and clearing up the vegetable plot

Anyone out there looking for left hand gloves?

My first T&M blog…….

Y Mis Bach – The little month

How to Choose The Best Plants to Compliment Your Pond

Surprising Household Products That Benefit Your Garden

Dance, Dance, Dance!

Thompson & Morgan Triallist’s Blog – February 2017

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