How to buy the best plants at a garden centre, the Small Garden Design course is back, and seven ways to beat slugs
Tips and tricks for when you're buying plants this weekend, and some design tips for gardens of all sizes. Plus: some Easter traditions, and the Gardening Mind Book Club launches in earnest
All of a sudden, it feels as if a light is switched on. We head out to buy plants, to start the garden off, to get it ship-shape and ready for the flowering year.
This week, I’ll be showing you how not to make expensive mistakes at the garden centre
Whatever the weather, I’m going to carry on thinking sunny, shiny thoughts. If it’s still raining over the Easter weekend, I’m still jolly well going to be getting out there anyway, rescuing the daffodils along with the tulips which have flowered a good three weeks early.
I’ll also be paying a visit to some local nurseries, with a view to revamping some of my borders, and I’m going to share some tips with you so that you don’t fall into some of the traps that can so easily catch us out when plant shopping.
And, prompted by
and her musings on Easter bunnies, I’m going to be sharing with you one photo which shows just how seriously I take Easter. This is serious, serious stuff.Before we get to that, though, here’s our Garden Digestif round-up of everything that happened here on The Gardening Mind last month. If you’re new to TGM, you’ll see you get a lot to browse through at your leisure each month:
The monthly Garden Digestif
Thank you everyone who joined in with the Zoom meet-up this week: we had a good look around The Gardening Mind and how to use its features, and the session turned into a bit of a Gardener’s Question Time with chats about slugs - there’s more about these REALLY annoying pests later in this post.
We took a look at the Top 50 best roses for cutting
In the last Small Garden Design session, the task was to decide what should go where in your garden:
I know a lot of you are still working on this part of the garden design course. As ever, there’s absolutely no rush to finish this. Today, we’re going to be getting our heads around another Garden Design Principle, which will help you understand how to make your garden ‘feel’ right.
If you haven’t yet joined in and you’d like to understand how to design your own garden, you can find all the lessons so far here:
There was a LOT that happened in Show Garden news. We went from the build of this garden to completion at breakneck speed. One minute we were looking at this extraordinary technology in action:
And the next minute, we were hearing we’d won the Grand Gold Award, which, it turns out, was the highest award at the show. For all of you who have been following along this crazy journey, you’ll know just how much this means as we had no idea if to would even work. And really importantly, it demonstrates that it’s worth trying out those seemingly bonkers ideas sometimes. I’ll be having a few more of those ideas along the way.
Why not come up with a design for a garden, for something you’ve never tried out before and therefore you don’t know if it is even completely possible, using plants that may not even flower? Then commit to building it in 19 days, and at the end of all of this, showing it to the public? Oh, and not forgetting to put yourself and your design skills at the mercy of judges who will decide, in their wisdom, whether your garden merits a medal of any colour? Does any of the above sound like a good idea to you?
If you’re interested in Show Gardens and would like to read more, do scroll down the Home page to the Show Gardens section where you can find lots of posts about the process of designing and building show gardens. This post, about the preparations of an RHS Chelsea Flower Show garden has always been free to read, so if you’d like to find out more, do have a look and let me know what you think:
There was a good discussion on the colour yellow, along with the regular What to Do/ What Not to Do feature
There’s a new Border Planting Design Course coming up soon here on The Gardening Mind:
Planting design is such a mystery to many, and so I’m going to break it down into bite-sized chunks for you. I promise you that it won’t feel such a mystery by the end. This will be for paid subscribers, so if you’d like to join in, sign up here:
In preparation for this course, we’ve discussed the best magnolias, along with the next part of my series on my favourite romantic plants:
From magnolias, we moved on to cherry blossom and vegetable bed ideas:
All of this was rounded up with an unusual combination of wildlife and Easter cakes:
And now for some updates:
IMPORTANT DATE: We’re having a REAL-LIFE get-together for paid subscribers at Water Lane in the summer. There’s a walk-around, a chat, and lunch if you’d like. Details are at the end of this post.
Don’t forget to join Sunday’s regular Show Us Your Plots on Chat . Wherever you are in the world, do show us what your garden is looking like - we’d love to see - and we’re not judgemental! All-comers from everywhere are welcome. On the Chat, this thread will be entitled Sunday March 31st so that you can find it easily.
We’re having a mid-week Dig Around this week with the fabulous writer and journalist
- I’m very much looking forward to sharing her words with you here on The Gardening Mind.Following last week’s vegetable seed discussion, I’m compiling a list of Gardening Minds’ recommended vegetable seed varieties - please feel free to add yours here or on the Chat, and I’ll put them all together in one easy place.
Next week, I’ll be sharing something very important to remember for the summer. I’ll also be checking in with you on the Chat through the week, so do head there now. Also, look out for an April Small Garden Design Zoom.
Beyond those hints, all other contents will remain secret till next week!
It’s Easter, a time for tradition, a time for celebration
My local garden centre
If you’re heading out to a plant nursery or garden centre this weekend, here are some points to bear in mind
Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility for humans and crops, is fêted in spring, with her symbols the egg and the hare. Different places have different traditions: in Italy, Easter is A Big Deal. Easter Sunday is for family, but Easter Monday (Pasquetta - Little Easter) is a day for heading off for picnics, for being with friends, for being outside. In Golant in Cornwall, we’ll be decorating our hard-boiled eggs and then rolling them down the main street.1
There’s another kind of tradition in the UK, still involving being outside. I reckon that Leporidae2-loving goddess must sprinkle a bit of her springtime magic of optimism as, all of a sudden, it feels as if a light is switched on. The design studio phone starts ringing off the hook, and the emails pour in. People head out to buy plants, to start the garden off, to get it ship-shape and ready for the flowering year. And this involves people heading off in droves to nurseries and garden centres.
I have a confession
When I’m at a garden centre, I have to really restrain myself from interfering with other people’s purchases. I can’t tell you quite how hard I find it, when I see trollies stuffed with plants, to basically keep my mouth firmly shut, when all I want really to do is go and help out, so that when they get home, they’re happy with what they’ve bought.
I realise that that makes me sound like a real interfering busybody, but the sentiment comes from the most well-intended of places. If you’ve ever got home from plant-shopping and wondered why all those plants, which looked just so good in your trolley, a week later then just look a bit lost in your garden, then this is for you.