New products at Blooming Direct
by John - May 15th, 2014.Filed under: Blooming Direct, New Products.
New lines at Blooming Direct
Hardy Perennial Gerbera ‘Garvinea’ Collection – pack of 3 x £14.99
The world’s first hardy Gerbera in a range of bright, zingy neon colours, the Garvinea series was launched 3 years ago to great acclaim across Europe. Bring popular florists gerbera flowers to a garden perennial, they give an amazing 5 Months of colour form Spring to Autumn every year – not many plants can do that. Well, now they have got even better. The breeders in Holland who created them have developed an improved series with much bigger flowers, and even longer lasting performance. called the ‘Sweet Series’, they are brand new in 2014, and we are pleased to be able to get some of the limited stock. Retaining the same benefits of being Winter Hardy to around -8C (although avoid severe Winter wet), and flowering for 3 seasons of colour, their highly distinctive flowers simply keep coming – up to 50 year on a 2 year old plant. We love them in traditional terracotta pots, in the sun, or grow in well-drained borders at the front, they will amaze you with their persistence of flowering and sheer flower number. In Winter they are herbaceous, so die back completely underground, to emerge bigger and better next year. You will get one plant each about to flower of:’Sweet Glow’ – deep warm orange’Sweet Honey’ – warm honey yellow’Sweet Dreams’ – bright magenta purple
Set of 3 ‘Red Hot Poker Primula’ (Primula vialii) in 9cm pot £12.99
These fantastically striking Primula vialii will provide a splash of vivid colour to borders and patio pots. Their unique, violet-pink flower heads, each with a striking, bright-red, central spike rise majestically on slender, upright stems from the plant below. Perfect for borders or pots on the patio, these colourful Primula will certainly be a talking point, and look even better when grown in groups! Each of your plants will form a compact habit of deeply-veined, lance-shaped leaves that will grow to about 30cm across.
Pair of Hydrangea ‘Glam Rock’ plants £12.99
This incredible new Hydrangea variety will truly impress with its eye-catching multi coloured flower heads. This new take on the traditional mop-head hydrangea has incredibly vivid flower heads, made up of multiple individual florets. Each one is a jaw-dropping pink-red, with a bright blue centre, and tipped with lime green. These highly unusual plants will really stand out in a border or pot on your patio. Depending on the acidity of the soil they are planted in, the colours can vary why not plant them in different soils for vibrant and varied displays? They are beautiful but incredibly tough and fully UK winter hardy.
Everbearer Strawberry ‘Buddy’ – 6 jumbo plugs £12.99
‘Buddy’ is the new everbearing strawberry that is taking the supermarket world by storm, and 2014 is the first year it has been offered to home gardeners. Everbearers are great for sapreading strawberry fruit production out. Starting slightly later than the Wimbledon peak, they have a biug yeiled in mid to late July, but then keep going through August, and peak again in September and go on til first frosts. This makes actually eating and using the crops easier, not one huge glut! Everbeares have historically not been quite as good on the taste scores as traditional ‘June bearers’, but ‘Buddy’ brealks the mould here. It produces big fruit of great taste, and the sweetest of any Everbearer to date and has won tatse-tests to prove this, hence it’s popularity with supermarkets. And it is a great cropper too – commercial trials showed almost 1Kg per plant in year 2 and 3 (just over 2 pounds per plant). It also has good mildew resistance too, so suits home garden production, where none of want to use chemicals if not needed. Let Buddy become your best friend in strawberries this year.
Veronica Inspire collection – 6 plants £9.99
Veronicas are a fantastically easy to grow hardy perennial, quickly rising in popularity due to the plant breeding work, which has led to the Inspire series – more flowers, bigger flowers, and better colours which last longer. A plant which ticks all these boxes is sure to be a garden winner. The plant forms neat clumps of foliage, from which in June to August, masses of tall, slender spires of pink and blue head skywards, like confectionery coloured mini rockets. each flower spike has hundreds of tiny ever-changing florets, which together make a beautiful overall mass of colour check out the close-up photos of each colour above. Reaching 50cm of more tall, Veronica Inspire is a great plant to add height and colour to mid-Summer gardens. You will get 3 established plants each of baby Pink and Blue, each will produce up to 30 spikes per plant. Grow in pots or the border, in full sun or light shade. very easy and hardy, they will simply get bigger and better each year. A real must for bees and butterflies too, the nectar form each flower is a huge attractant. This new variety is almost never offered in this size of plant, offering incredible value, as they often sell for much more in garden centres
Pack of 3 Compact Patio Buddleia Lilac Chip £9.99
Incredibly compact, and growing to just 2ft 6′ tall, Lilac Chip is perfect Dwarf Butterfly Bush for patio pots or as a low, colourful and fragrant hedge. The sweetly scented blooms act like magnets for Butterflies, drawing dozens at a time in to your garden all through the summer months. Just like its larger cousins, this new mini variety will attract dozens of beautiful fluttering butterflies to your garden to feed on the sweet nectar from its flowers. Thankfully, one characteristic it doesnt share is the ability to self seed and spread itself round your garden. Simply stunning in a pot on your patio it also makes an equally impressive, low growing, scented hedge. Easy to grow, incredibly low maintenance and a great garden performer, Dwarf Buddleia Lilac Chip is one of this years must have plants!
Callicarpa Profusion (Beauty Berry) 9cm – set of 3 £9.99
Sometimes its hard for a plant to live up to its name, but Beauty Berry doesnt fail. This desirable shrub is grown for its long-lasting display of metallic pink berries that cling in dense clusters to bare branches between autumn and late winter. Excellent grown alongside other shrubs in a sunny or slightly shaded position, this bushy deciduous plant grows to around 3m, but can be kept more compact by pruning. In spring its young foliage is tinged a lovely shade of bronze before turning dark green, while summer interest is provided by a mass of pink flowers. A must have!
Kiwi ‘Solissimo’ 9cm £6.99
What’s not to like about easy-to-grow Kiwi fruits, which can crop reliably outside here in the UK? ‘Solissimo’ is the latest development of self-fertile Kiwi fruits, grown commercially, and is an improvement over the variety ‘Jenny’. This gets round the problem most people have had, as you typically needed a male and female variety to get crops, and then some bees to pollinate too. That, however, is now in the past! Grow against a sunny, South facing wall, ‘Solissimo’ is quite vigorous, and can reach 3-4M in 5 years if not trained or pruned. Yet it responds well to trimming and shaping, and should produce fruit in 2-3 years reliably, and heavy crops beyond that, surprisingly easily. Juicy, fresh and rich in Vitamin C, the fruits can be picked in Autumn, and are delicious eaten fresh – quite different to supermarket fruits chilled and transported across the globe.
Patio Forsythia Maree d’Or 9cm £5.99
A french-bred breakthrough in Forsythia, ‘Maree d’Or’ (or Golden Bells), has the same spectacular yellow flower displays in early Spring as other varieties, but in a naturally compact, low maintenance form. Reaching only 60-80cm tall, and spreading to 1m or so in 5-7 years, this compact form is perfect for Patio pots and smaller garden borders. All the flower power, and little of the space! Grow in sunny or lightly shade spots in any soils – from acidic to heavy clays, it is a very easy and very hardy and tolerant shrub – a ‘good doer’ as we like to call them!