Perennial Collection – BETTER THAN HALF PRICE!

Ready to plant straight into your borders, our super jumbo herbaceous perennial plants will fill a 3m x 2m border! Collection comprises 3 plants each of Coreopsis grandiflora, Delphinium ‘Pacific Giants’, Poppy ‘Prinzessin Victoria Louise’, Heuchera ‘Bressingham Hybrids’ and Echinacea purpurea.

SPECIAL OFFER: 15 plants only £14.99 SAVE £19.96!
Offer code: AF12023

T&Cs: Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer code and is only valid with orders placed online at www.thompson-morgan.com.

START DATE: Monday 20th February, 2012

END DATE: Midnight Sunday 26th February 2012

Fantastic chicken houses at Wriggle Wrigglers

Chicken Run, 1.5 metre length £144.00
Strongly constructed from Tanalised timber and mesh. Available in two lengths. Short Run approximate length 1.5 metres Long Run approximate length 3 metres

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Kids enjoy gardening and it’s a great hobby to get them interested in. Start them off with some of these fantastic seeds from Kew picked as being great seeds for kids to grow.
Kew kids seeds available at Thompson & Morgan

Mimosa pudica – Kew for Kids Children’s Seeds – 1 packet (50 seeds) £1.69
“Sensitive Plant”, so called because the leaflets fold up in a most spectacular manner when touched or blown by the wind. Run your hand over the plant and the leaves will fold up and the leaf stalk will drop as if on a hinge. The movements are quickest with young plants in bright sunshine. They return to their normal condition in a few minutes.

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Beechgrove Garden will be back on TV on 29th March. New day -
Thursdays – and new channel – BBC2 Scotland. And don’t forget that
those south of the border who don’t have Sky or Freesat can watch it
on iPlayer.

Bedding Plants for Your Garden: a talk by Mr David Usher


at Carhampton Gardening Club

Friday 17th February

7.30pm at Carhampton Village Hall

Also Including: Stalls — Raffle — Gardening Tips

Competitions

Foliage pot plant

Photograph of a winter scene

Admission (including refreshments)

Members 50p

Visitors £1

Just read about this fantastic bedding plant talk!
Fancy growing some bedding plants? Visit Bedding plant offers website to buy some

Fancy trying some home grown potatoes this year? They can’t be beaten for taste when you dig them up and cook them within half an hour from plot to plate!
How to Grow Potatoes in the Ground
and

How to Grow Potatoes in bags or containers

Thompson and morgan have two great guides for growing them as well as a huge choice of spuds to grow!

New products today at Thompson & Morgan

Potato ‘Allotment Favourites Collection’ – 6 x 10 tuber packs £14.99
First early, second early, maincrop.Grow these reliable and trusted allotment favourites for an ongoing supply of home grown potatoes. Height and spread: 60cm (24″).Please note: This collection CANNOT be sent to Northern Ireland or Eire.Collection comprises:Potato ‘Lady Christl’ (First early) – Smooth oval, pale yellow skinned tubers with creamy flesh that remains firm on cooking.Potato ‘Orla’ (First early) – With good foliage and tuber blight resistance, producing creamy skinned, pale yellow fleshed, round-oval tubers.Potato ‘Kestrel’ (Second early) – Producing tubers of consistent size and shape, with attractive, smooth skins and violet eyes.Potato ‘Sante’ (Early maincrop) – Probably the most pest and disease resistant variety, growing well in all soils.Potato ‘Cara’ (Late maincrop) – Creamy skin and striking bright red eyes.Potato ‘Lady Balfour’ (Early maincrop) – A reliable variety with excellent disease resistance.Useful links:How to grow potatoes in the ground Potato Selector GuideHow to grow potatoes in bags     How to stop blight

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The Bee Garden: How to Create or Adapt a Garden To Attract and Nurture Bee

The Bee Garden: How to Create or Adapt a Garden To Attract and Nurture Bees

Bees play a vital and irreplaceable role in pollinating our flowers, fruits and vegetables.


The more bees in your garden the healthier, more productive and more pleasant a place it will be.


Yet bees are declining rapidly and many people, even if they do not wish to keep bees themselves, are asking what can be done on an individual basis to help the bee. This book is a response to that request. It will demonstrate in one accessible volume how each of us can play our part in providing a bee-friendly environment, no matter how much gardening space and/or time we may have.


It includes:


* How bees forage, what bees you can expect to find in your garden and what plants are best for them. :


* Why honey bees are so important; what they need to thrive and how they detect and access those requirements; and what varieties of plants are best suited to provide those needs.


* How the gardener can offer and maintain a bee-friendly garden, followed by a season-by-season account of what beefriendly plants are in flower and when, and what jobs the gardener can be doing during these times to help bees thrive.

* A gazetteer of selected bee-friendly plants, arranged by type of plant in seasonal sub-sections.


* Illustrative, practical planting plans, including a culinary herb garden, a potager, a wild flower garden, and a 3 seasons traditional border.

There is a fantastic short series on BBC 2 at the moment called Bees, Butterflies and Blooms which is Sarah Raven’s attempt to get more pollinating insect friendly plants across the UK. It’s on iplayer at the moment and is well worth a watch.

in the second episode she visits Harrogate’s Britain in Bloom team and encourages them to plant beds with more biodiversity in. They plant a couple of beds up and the immense number of insects on these beds is impressive when there are none on the normal bedding displays.

Sarah also challenges the UK gardening industry, the Horticultural Trades Association and the Royal Horticultural Society to champion pollinating insects by launching a ‘pollinator-friendly’ logo at the Chelsea Flower Show. The logo and label would enable gardeners to identify the best plants for bees and butterflies throughout garden centres and nurseries in the UK.

And at home, Sarah meets expert garden naturalist Steve Head, and explores her own garden’s suitability for insect pollinators. Inspired by what she discovers, she develops a nectar garden – a mini oasis for pollinators.

The moth collector she had in the garden discovered an elephant hawk moth that was really pretty and one that looked like a twig.

Well worth a watch!

And Sarah Raven has several gardening books available: Sarah Raven’s books at Amazon

Thompson & Morgan has this fantastic bee friendly Thrift available.
Flowering Period is May, June – so a good plant to start the summer with. Planting for bees should try to include something in flower every month and sometimes the early part of the year can be vital to their survival.
Other spring plants to consider are bulbs like bluebells and daffodils, as well as ornamental flowering cherrys.

Armeria maritima – 6 jumbo plugs £8.49
Dense cushions of bright green foliage produce spherical flower heads set atop sturdy upright stems. The pretty pink flowers of Armeria maritima appear the whole summer long in the loveliest shade of pink. Undemanding and easy to grow, these appealing little perennials are well suited to poorer soils and coastal conditions with a toughness that belies their beauty. Height and spread: 30cm (12″).

Foxgloves are fantastic plants for bees. They have a success of flowers on their long stems which means there’s flowers for the bees over a long period. The single flowers are well designed for bees to collect the nectar and they are lovely looking plants for the gardener to look at too!

Foxglovess at Thompson & Morgan – lovely flower range. They grow to different heights, make a lovely addition to a cottage garden style planting, add height. They take two years to grow from seed to flower though. So plant them in trays or start them in a nursery bed. They will often self seed once established though. Save some seed for the next year to sow another lot of plants with though so you have a success of flowers – year 1 is no flowers, year 2 is flowers, so start some more plants in year 2 from seed to in year 3 you get flowers again. After that if the conditions are right they will self seed. They don’t mind a nice shadey corner with lots of leaf mould in the soil. Traditionally a woodland edge plant I think.

Foxglove ‘Foxy’ – 1 packet (1500 seeds) £1.99
‘Foxy’ is an ANNUAL foxglove. If sown indoors late winter/early spring it flowers in summer (regular foxgloves are biennial). ‘Foxy’ is dwarfer, invaluable for exposed sites in shades of pink to white with contrasting mottled throats. The flowers are useful for cutting. Flowers summer. Height: 65cm (26in).CAUTION: All Parts Are Poisonous

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