by Wendie Alexander | May 10, 2016 | Gardening News, Gardening Posts, Vegetables
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has been a guiding figure in the UK’s gardening community since it was founded in 1804. The RHS has been at the forefront of horticultural practice, research and education ever since. The RHS was founded on principles of encouraging and improving the science, art and practice of horticulture in all its diversity.
The main aim of the RHS was to provide a repository of horticultural knowledge for the general improvement of the country. Now the leading gardening charity in the UK, the RHS is dedicated to helping people share their passion for plants, and encouraging excellence in horticulture.
Aubergine ‘Bonica’ & Broccoli ‘Red Fire’ F1 Hybrid
Thompson & Morgan (T&M) has been in the business of horticultural practice for nearly as long as the RHS. T&M began trading in 1855, also to provide excellence for the horticultural community. The aim of the company is to provide quality and innovative products; incorporated with the valuable knowledge needed to educate customers to grow their own produce successfully.
By providing quality products, T&M has become one of the leading horticultural companies in the market place today, frequently winning medals and honours for gardening excellence, especially from their customers, who are always happy to champion their favourite company.
Carrot ‘Primo’ & Dwarf Bean ‘Sonesta’
T&M, just like the RHS, wants to achieve gardening excellence and so the Royal Horticultural Society has given its seal of approval by endorsing a range of T&M seeds. These seeds all have the Award of Garden Merit, which means each plant is expected to perform under a variety of strict requirements. Such as excellent for ordinary use in an everyday setting, availability, of good constitution, essentially stable in form and colour and needs to be reasonably resistant to pests and diseases.
The extensive range of seeds include the staples of British vegetable growing. From the delicious Aubergine ‘Bonica’ to Radish ‘Mars’ F1 Hybrid with the range including everything else in-between. Along with this large range of seeds is a range of the RHS Kids’ Collection.This collection includes a fantastic range of fun seeds for kids to grow. The Cress Extra Curled will have the children excited about growing their own food, and the Snake Gourd is an amazing looking gourd to delight the youngsters.
RHS Kids Collection Carrots & Runner Beans
The Royal Horticultural Society and Thompson & Morgan have brought another great improvement to the gardening world, with extensive trials over the years both have worked hard to bring the gardener a crop they can rely on and which includes the latest in horticultural breeding.
by Terri Overett | Nov 25, 2015 | Gardening Posts, Your Stories
We ran an allotment completion this year so that we could see what you make of your allotments and why they mean so much to you. Our winning entry was from Caroline Lawson from Veg in the Park, who told us all about their community growing up;
V.I.P ( Veg In the Park ) is a community growing hub for all residents across East Oldham, we don’t say allotments as this indicates it’s their own, and everything we grow we share, sell and all money will be reinvested back into V.I.P
We are a very new growing hub as we only opened in July of this year, our age range is from 3 to 95, and we all benefit from each other.
The growing hub was an idea that me and a friend came up with as we realised not all kids knew where veg came from and had never even touched or tasted some vegetables. The hub site was funded by public health and our local councillors, but we opened with no money in the bank and limited tool. With friends, we grew some of the veg in our own gardens throughout the year so when the hub was opened we could transplant what we had grown. We have 3 local primary schools wanting to have their garden clubs with us now, and we have given each school a flat bed that they can grow and produce whatever they want , they will be taking over their beds soon.
We also want to help the older folk as well as most are in bad health and even though they have gardening skills, they can no longer manage their allotments, but can come and help us. We have 18 raised beds of various heights so no bending down to ground levels, and we get expert advice from people who have gardening skills.
We also have a 50 foot polytunnel, so we are not lacking in space! Our site is all about growing from seed to plate, and we tell everyone the one rule we have is to have fun, It also helps with health & well being.
A very worthy winner!
by Terri Overett | Jun 16, 2014 | Gardening News
Being a beginner gardener is exciting and refreshing, and there will always be something for you to do and learn about your garden. But where do you start? Which soil do you use? How to prune? When to Sow? How do you grow plants? The questions are endless! We have collated 10 easy crops to grow for beginners. From plants to fruit and veg these will help to get you on your way and ease you into gardening.
Strawberries
Everybody loves the fresh, juicy flavour of sun warmed strawberries picked straight from the garden. So versatile that they can be grown in containers, hanging baskets, Flower Pouches® and window boxes, or planted straight into the ground. Grow our ‘Extend the Season’ pack to ensure a plentiful supply of juicy, sweet strawberries throughout June and July.
Sunflowers
Easy plants for kids to grow – they will definitely be impressed with Sunflower ‘Mongolian Giant’ growing up to 14 feet tall! Just sow the seeds straight into the ground in a sunny, sheltered spot and watch them grow and grow and grow! Be sure to provide the stems with supports to grow the tallest sunflowers around.
Blackberries
Forage for hedgerow fruits in your own garden! Grow blackberries in that rough corner behind the shed, or let them scramble over an old unsightly fence – growing your own fruit couldn’t be simpler. These delicious fruits will grow almost anywhere and don’t need much attention. Train the stems onto wires to make them easier to harvest – if you are not keen on being prickled, try a thornless variety like Apache.
Sweet Peas
Who can resist their delicious fragrance? And the more you pick, the more flowers they produce! The large seeds of sweet peas are easy to handle, but if sowing sounds complicated then buy them as sweet pea plug plants! A sunny spot, a supportive fence, and plenty of water is all these climbers need to produce your own ‘home grown’ cut flowers. Just keep an eye out for troublesome slugs and snails – they love the young shoots.
Apples
A well established apple tree is a real asset, and there is an apple to suit every size of garden. Choose your apple carefully to suit your tastes and the size of your garden. If space allows then choose two varieties that will pollinate one another. In smaller gardens try growing fruit trees in tubs. A dwarf Family Apple has 3 different varieties on the same tree – just perfect for a container on the patio. Or if you fancy something really different then a step-over apple tree will create a real talking point!
Pansy
With their cheery faces, it’s hard to resist the appeal of pansies. These garden favourites are easy plants to grow from seed but even easier from pansy plug plants. Whether you grow them for winter or summer colour, remember to deadhead the faded flowers to encourage more and more.
Currants
Redcurrants, blackcurrants and whitecurrants are perfect soft fruits for decorating desserts, makings jams and jellies, or adding to sauces. They freeze well too so you can savour the taste of summer during the winter months. If you are tight for space try our Redcurrant ‘Rovada’ which can be trained as a cordon so it is a perfect soft fruit for growing in containers.
Fuchsias
Easy to grow patio plants when grown from plugs, and best loved for adding colour to hanging baskets and containers. Fuchsias come in all colours and shapes, from trailing to upright you could even try the climbing fuchsia ‘Lady Boothby’ for an ambitious display. For a really professional look, pinch out the tips of each stem while the plants are still young to encourage lots of bushy growth.
Raspberries
Autumn fruiting raspberries are self supporting so you can plant them in containers or in clumps throughout your garden. This undemanding crop can be harvested from late summer to early autumn for a delicious dessert. Autumn fruiting raspberries are simple to maintain – just shear the canes to ground level each February and look forward to another juicy crop!
Learn more about growing currants using our helpful hub page.
by Terri Overett | Apr 27, 2014 | Gardening News
I’ve been coming up with ideas to keep children occupied outside for the last ten years. And let’s be totally honest here – it has been a somewhat selfish act. The thing is I love gardening – it is both my hobby and profession – and I realised that I would have much more time to do this if I could persuade my three children outside too.
And now I’ve assembled all my favourite ideas in my latest book 101 Things For Kids To Do Outside. Given my love of gardening as you might expect there are quite a few activities with a horticultural bent – brewing plant tonics, planting lettuce balls and creating mobile herb gardens to name but a few.
However, to me variety is the key to getting kids outside. Not only is every child very different but the activities also need to work for whatever mood they are in. So there are also plenty of games, crafts, projects and experiments. And while some ideas are perfect for a quick burst of activity, some will keep the kids occupied all day long.
My hope is that this book will remind children that outdoors can be the best play space there is and from this a love of nature and gardening might also be surreptitiously fostered. Or at the very least they’ll leave their screens for five minutes. I’ll take my victories wherever I can.
Five ideas to get you started:
1. Hold a snail race Find a smooth surface outside and draw two rings with chalk – an inner one about 10-20cm across, the outer much larger. On starter’s orders place the snails behind the line of the inner circle. The winner will be the one who crosses the outer circle line first.
2. Play Pickpocket Tag Each player has a strip of material, hanky or headscarf to hang out of their back pocket or a waistband. The aim is to grab and capture as many of your fellow players’ strips as possible. The winner is the one with the most at the end.
3. Go on a bear hunt Select three of your favourite bears and ask a grown up to hide them around the garden while you stay inside, or just shut your eyes. This may sound easy but, unlike brothers or sisters, soft toys are exceptionally good hide-and-seekers. They can stay very still and have never been known to giggle, sneeze or burp inadvertently.
4. Take the matchbox challenge Each player has an empty matchbox each and 15 minutes to fill it with as many things from the garden as they can find. At the end of the game, add up the points, one for each different item, to see who has won.
5. Make a nature walk bracelet Put a piece of duct tape, parcel tape or masking tape around your wrist sticky side outwards. Now as you go in your walk you can look out for natural objects with which you can decorate your bracelet. You could decide on a colour theme to match your outfit or perhaps collect a rainbow of colours from red to violet.
Dawn Isaac – To find out more please visit Dawns blog
by Rachel Davidson-Foster | May 24, 2013 | Your Stories
Was buying a house called “Brambles” an omen? (Part three)
“Every snow drift has a silver lining?” or “Is it true that gardeners are the world’s greatest optimists?”
If you are inclined to classify yourself as British on those forms we all have to complete every now and again, then I’m going to hazard a guess that you’ve got a socially engineered propensity to bang on about the weather as much as possible. And if you’re further inclined to put “gardening” down as one of your hobbies or interests then I’m going to increase my bet that you in particular like nothing better than a good analysis of what the climate (micro and macro) is up to and the effect it is having on your plants. I feel fairly safe in making these sweeping generalisations – I am a happy member of this simplification – as I think that these past 12 months of weather have given British gardeners much to muse over and ruminate on.
According to the BBC Weather website this year the normal signs of spring’s arrival have been delayed by approximately one month and that March was colder still than December and January together – the coldest March since 1987 (nearly rivalling the infamous “ice-age” winter of 1962 of which I am happy to report I am too young to have experienced). It is certainly true that winter was refusing to exit stage left as per the normal stage instructions. So as the back-curtain is edged down and winter takes his final bow and swaggers slowly towards the side wings I thought I would write up a few observations about how my garden here at Brambles has fared. As I raise my head from the daily grind of work, school runs and housework it seems to me that the year has been on fast-forward and I am confounded at the fact that we are practically halfway through the year already. Look outside however and nature has decided to ignore this. There is no interest in the Gregorian calendar months that are slipping by and being in the garden at the moment is to experience a degree of time travel – back to approximately early April depending upon where you live.
This “extra time” is an absolute gift that the weather systems have conspired to hand to me. You see, my garden is invariably left to its own devices from mid-October through to early March. There are definitely months during most winters where the garden will not see me at all! This is generally down to the fact that I work full-time and so weekday gardening is just not possible in the short days and that the run up to Christmas is beyond crazy-busy with my two children having social diaries that would exhaust the Queen! During this five month absence therefore my garden happily decays back in on itself, flopping inwardly against the cold and attempting to revert back to its ‘field’ status. It reminds me of Greta Garbo – “I want to be alone” – actually rather pleased to remain out of the limelight and enjoying the enforced reclusive hibernation away from me. Meanwhile I stand forlornly at the French doors peering out, Christmas lights blinking behind me, onto the cold-shoulder of my garden, fretting that my plans are not progressing fast enough or with enough skill or fervour!
So it was with some relief that I was finally able to get outside this year and grab my obdurate, wayward garden by the shoulders and force it back towards the light-side. According to my garden journal this year that was 17th March. Only seven days later than 2012 interestingly – but feeling a whole lot later. I set about the first task of clearing all of the decay and getting down to the hard graft of weeding. The garden has five main borders in it – the largest of which runs the entire length of the plot and so is approximately 300 feet long. I try to be methodical in my weeding of these – mainly so that I remember from week to week what I’ve done. Now normally, the first run through will take from March to end of May for me to progress from the top of the garden down to the house, weeding the borders as I go. But this year I was completed by 7th April. A full four weeks earlier than 2012! Celebrations were held – documented by my ecstatic, if rather banal journal notes of “Phew! Finished! Amazed!”
This productivity is a direct result of the weather being as consistently bad and cold has it has been. Normally you see I am overtaken by the F1 roar of the perennial weeds (see my last blog post) as their turbo boosters kick in and they accelerate past me and my garden fork to put on huge leaf growth and deep, deep roots. I am usually left standing, hands on hips staring in despair thinking I am defeated – but not this year! The awful weather has dealt me a trump hand! I have had the time between the first step into the garden and the growing season really kicking in to get through the entire borders. The weeds were just lining up on the grid ready for the ‘pedals to the metal’ moment when I was able to pounce and eradicate them!
Okay – I say eradicate in the blind and comfortable denial I often like to deploy in life. Weeding is a constant cycle that means every month I have to start at the top and work my way, weekend by weekend, back down the garden, interspersed with the other more enjoyable chores – seed sowing, potting on etc. etc that needs to happen. But nevertheless I am nursing a burgeoning love of the perma-frosts we’ve suffered and a hope that every winter turns out that way. Because for the first time since moving to Brambles I have been able to feel on top of this garden and able to carve my vision more permanently and indelibly into the borders without the blurring and obfuscation of the thistles, nettles, creeping buttercup and Rosebay Willow Herb.
Whilst my hard-coded practicality is whispering that I shouldn’t be too smug, that there is time a plenty of the garden to be out of control in a jiffy again, I cannot let this breaking point go without some celebration of it and so I share with you my garden highlights of the year so far: These are pictures that I take to remind myself of the garden’s progress through the year and for my own self-aggrandisement and pleasure (my Facebook friends are quite resigned to being bombarded by the latest ‘flower of the week’ pictures in their newsfeeds!)
Hellebores – a real treat in the cold winter months
One of the first flowers to brave the winter chill – but of course ‘brave’ is the wrong adjective as, to these Hellebores Orientalis, the cold is delightful. Encouraging one to have to bend down to them and lift their flowers skyward they make the job of gardening next to them a treat – the chance to see them up close is one’s reward for the hard graft.
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Cheerful daffs
Narcissus “Cheerfulness” in all its Orchid-esque glory. These are not only very pretty and luxuriant they bulk up year on year very nicely and have a pleasant fragrance. They’re grown in the raised border that is on the terrace area so that it is possible to look directly into their faces. Frankly the person who named them knew what they were talking about – they make me cheerful!
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Tulips – not very successful this year
Tulips have been one of my disasters this year – this specimen is the best of a rotten bunch I’m afraid. They started off looking promising and of course I was grateful to see their leaves poking up through the gravel in the pots, but as soon as they were up they have faded quickly. Did anyone else have the same experience I wonder, or is it just me being unlucky? These go down on the ‘must try harder’ next year list.
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Lilac buds, blue sky, what could be better?
Emergent lilac buds against the best of sky-blues. A clear sign that spring was properly on its way and celebrated accordingly on the day it was taken. A simple but soulfully compelling shot of energy form the garden – one that I have no real part to play in other than a tickle of pruning after flowering.
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Bearded iris – gorgeous blue blooms
The garden enters its blue phase. This is my one specimen of bearded iris – name unknown as it was purchased from a local charity plant sale. I am hopeful that it will bulk up quickly so that I can divide it and create more ‘exclamation marks’ of it throughout this border. They’re short lived flowers, but definitely worth it whilst they’re here. I find it hard to keep my eyes off them. Behind the Iris are the ‘local’ wallflowers; grown from seed that my Mother collected from her garden. Again; name unknown therefore, but the scent is one of the best honeyed wallflower scents I’ve had the pleasure to weed amongst. They will annoy me in their raggedly appearance as they progress to set-seed but I will put up with them so that I am able to collect that seed and keep that fragrance connection alive.
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Perennial cornflowers – very hardy
Perennial Cornflowers have to have one of the best blue colours around in my humble opinion. These have been untouched by the freezing temperatures as befits their continental European heritage. I have managed to get them staked this year though to prevent them flopping about later on in the season and smothering their neighbours as they did last year.
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Sweet pea frames ready for my no-fuss sweet peas
Sweet pea frames in place – as instructed by Monty Don this weekend just gone (not personally you understand, just on the telly via Gardeners’ World!). The sweet peas are also in the ground (unseen in the photo) and are ‘Navy Blue’. Grown from seed in my usual way; no pre-soaking or faffing, just put into long-tom pots to allow for good long root runs and kept in the greenhouse to give them a bit more shelter. I hope that they will produce a great show later in the summer and provide lots of cut flowers for the house. Even with last year’s wash-out summer I got quite churlishly fed-up of having to keep cutting sweet peas, the volume of flowers on them was so great. I happily look forward to getting royally annoyed with this ‘chore’ again this year!
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Forget-me-not blanket
The Mysotis (Forget-Me-Nots) this year have been stunning. Outright blankets of them spread sporadically throughout the borders giving a much wanted regular rhythm to the place. I might add that this is their own doing, not my conceit but I am happy to take the plaudits if offered! If I were Cath Kidston or one of the other famous textile designers I’d be very tempted to take this image and make some best-selling fabric out of it….
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So that is a quick canter through Brambles’ gardening year so far. I wonder what your ‘upsides’ to the prolonged winter have been? I’d love to hear about them – so please do leave me a comment. As my friends and work-colleagues will confirm– I like nothing better than being able to talk horticulture.
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