Three, er, maturing sisters, talk about plants and gardening and a bit about how we’ve been sisters for over 60 years. Our gardens are in England, Scotland and Normandy.
‘Let’s talk about planting up winter pots this week’ gushed Elaine and Caroline. And indeed they are full of new-found ideas on how to go about it which added HUGELY to what they knew from their own wisdom and experience. They both happened to watch an apparently wonderful Zoom presentation by Harriet Rycroft and were […]
When we three sat down to decide our topic for this week, it was a toss-up between Halloween Horror plants and our pick of delightful spring bulbs to plant now. The latter won, you might be relieved to hear, but frankly one of Laura’s choices looks like it could easily fit in the former category. […]
Oh, how the Growbag tables have turned this year! Down in the south Elaine and I have endured ‘the summer that never was’, now seemingly being followed by a dank, soggy autumn. Meanwhile annoying little sister Caroline, ensconced in the Highlands of Scotland, has been basking in sunshine since April, a fact of which she never […]
Whoa! Chelsea in the autumn! How are you feeling about it? A lot has happened in the last 18 months (three million new gardeners, working from home, mental health concerns, climate change fears, the joy of being together again….) How have these impacted on the Show? We Growbags can report that the impact was frankly […]
With Chelsea Flower Show now in our sights we will no doubt be wowed by the dazzling array of sun-loving late summer prairie plants and grasses that are now so popular (and don’t worry, we’ve all three got CFS tickets so prepped to bring you our personal highlights, and we’ll try to keep Caroline away […]
Now come on, be honest: when did you last take a long critical look at your patch, with a view to sorting out (by which I generally mean GETTING RID OF) some of the eyesores? When you’ve been looking at a gruesome mistake in your garden for a long time, you end up barely registering […]
Most of our chosen garden trees will be blossom trees such as cherries or crab apples which will flower in spring and be followed by berries or fiery leaf colour in autumn. So it’s actually a rare and precious thing to come across a tree that saves its flower power until high summer. We three […]
Yes, yes, we know that high summer is all about bright flowers, and the zingier the better, but foliage has its place too. We want to sing the praises of some of our favourite summer leaves this week and encourage you to consider incorporating a few among all the dazzle of an early August garden. […]
Most of us have a bash at a few annuals each year, and in some gardens they are the colourful mainstay of summer beds and pots. The hardy ones can be sprinkled outdoors in early spring whilst others benefit from a head start indoors until they can brave the English climate. I went for the […]
No one can call themselves a gardener if they don’t have at least a couple of clematis, and because you can have one in flower in any given month of the year, this could easily creep to 12. But they don’t succeed with everyone and a certain oneupmanship creeps in with us 3 Growbags, as […]
It’s peak ‘iris’ at the moment, but with so many different ones to choose from which would be best for your garden? As usual we three growbags have differing opinions…..Elaine is in full-on ‘English bearded’ mode, it’s go large or go home as far as she’s concerned. For the more botanically curious and patient amongst […]
Succulents, those plants with fleshy leaves or stems that store water to see them through drought periods, ought to be on all gardeners’ radars as our climate heats up, but they aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. There is a sliding scale of succulence from full blown cacti, through aloes and echiveras to chubby stonecrops, small […]
So in a week where we might have been heading to the embankment in London for the Chelsea Flower Show, Elaine and I instead found ourselves heading north to Caroline’s new abode in the Highlands. We thought we’d been invited up to sip cocktails in her glasshouse and marvel at the progress she had made […]
It’s the FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of the 3Growbags blog – WHAAAA!! Thank you so much for coming on this journey with us. As a little gift we’ve partnered with lovely Hayloft Plants, (another start-up gardening business set up by mums) to give you a chance of winning one of ten £10 Hayloft vouchers in a free […]
Three sisters, three types of peony, so we’ve taken one each. The most normal sister (me ..lol) will be taking you through the most commonly grown ‘herbaceous’ peonies, whilst Elaine will be cooing over her stunning collection of the more rarefied ‘tree’ peonies (whilst making us all feel a bit inadequate) and Caroline, the most […]
I don’t think that the horticultural chasm that exists between we three sisters’ geographical locations has ever gaped as widely as it did this Easter. The topic of spring climbers was obviously put forward by smug Elaine, who gardens in an urban heat-island on the South Coast, with scarcely a thought about what might or […]
Hurrah! We’re storming through the vaccination programme here in the UK but wait, that means getting the hair cut, weight lost and joggers back in the cupboard pretty damn quick and the garden prepped for VISITORS! Long-time family friend and Growbag follower Ann is seeking advice for creating little coffee spots in her garden using […]
The 3Growbags have written a book – Glory be! It has come about in rather an unexpected way, and in fact stems (see what I did there?) from the pandemic. A year ago in the first Lockdown, there were a few big positives among a morass of negatives, and one of them was the huge […]
Never before has the blooming of spring bulbs been quite so lovingly embraced than after months of virtual house arrest with nothing but Harry and Megan to relieve the tedium. So today we’re going to have a look at a few early species that might be brightening up your lives, although I must warn you […]
Is there anything so full of promise as ordering and sowing seeds, but what to choose this year? We three sisters will have different approaches. I will want to experiment with a pre-determined ecological outcome in mind, Elaine will go for the dreamily romantic (thank goodness you don’t grow roses from seed or we’d be […]
It’s catalogues galore now isn’t it! Sarah Raven, Mr Fothergills, Parkers – just so tempting. But remember a garden is not created by plants alone. A garden needs to have paths and seating at the very least, possibly steps and walls, and ideally some tasteful artefacts placed around it (a hot tub is, of course, […]
We’re pretty much confined to barracks now in our gardens and local parks, but our daily exercise walks can be livened up no end by one of those many winter shrubs that puts its best foot forward in the coldest months of the year. As the most normal of the 3growbags sisters (let’s face it, […]
Twenty-twenty will go down in history as a year in which we went back to basics and changed habits of a lifetime (although obvs a few remain – Elaine still thinks four squares of Cadbury’s Whole Nut constitutes a healthy breakfast, and Caroline continues to count red wine as one of her five a day). […]
This week we’re doing something a little different. 2020 was tough wasn’t it? If ever gardening came into its own, it was this year so instead of Growtips this week, we’d like to share with you a short video of our 12 months. This, dear readers, was our 2020 Next week we’ll be looking at […]
As you can see from our feature picture, we Growbags are wistfully remembering the times when we could share large slabs of cake and cuppas in a cosy café…….! We’ve decided this week it’s your turn to put your brain cells to work. To give you a break from baking mince pies and festive Zoom […]
Who doesn’t love a beautifully-planted festive pot by the front door? And surely we need the pleasure of that this year more than ever. So much classier than a flashing Santa on the front lawn (if you know what I mean) and kinder on the neighbours who live opposite. Your first task is to decide […]
Christmas is starting early this year so we’re here to give you a head-start on your garden gift shopping. Our first offer is something very close to home – our very first book! Unlike E and C who have frittered away lockdown getting their Zoom settings perfectly angled to show themselves and their home offices […]
Who inspired you to take up gardening? To whose books do you return time and again? Whose name do you Google when you want an opinion on a plant? Today we three Growbags are going to be talking about our all-time gardening heroes. Obviously, just as in Bake Off (see how our cultural horizons have […]
Hey folks, we need some good news and here it comes! It is going to be a GORGEOUS autumn! When it’s not pelting or a Force 10 gale, we should get outside and revel in what is shaping up to be a fabulously colourful few weeks. Let’s just feast our eyes on the glory of […]
Joy of joys! I’ve been to a Plant Fair, a proper one at Great Dixter, with real people who’ve grown the plants themselves, not imported them on trolleys from the Netherlands as is often the way at garden centres. This precious breed of nursery owners really are among the unsung heroes of lockdown and it’s time […]
Now you might think that since you have been slogging night and day in your garden for months and months this year you can now put your feet up. Oh no, no, no! You’ll be thrilled to hear that September is an EXCELLENT time to renovate your garden. Laura can tell you why, later. You […]
Oh boy, if ever we needed our plants and gardens to keep on and on putting a smile on our faces, it is NOW. A long, slow beautiful autumn right into the back end of October at least, please. But what plants will help us rage against the dying of the light? (Don’t worry if […]
You know you’re a proper gardener when you start propagating plants, and generously giving them away to others. My own garden is full of plant gifts from Elaine and Louise, – none yet from Caroline but one lives in hope. Indeed one of the pleasures of a walk around your garden is the memories of […]
Never has the sisterly horticultural divide been greater than this summer. I berated Caroline last Saturday for using a photo of Elaine wearing a fleece (unthinkable this week – she would keel over with heat exhaustion) and she hissed back that it was (her words) ‘pissing with rain again in Scotland’. So our sibling suggestions […]
Unfortunately my sisters view windy sites in a garden as a problem rather than an opportunity – if only they had studied proper subjects at school such as geography and biology, (instead of in Elaine’s case, Classics, and in Caroline’s, boys) they would know that in other regions of the world there are plants that […]
We’re talking about which plants look great together this week so obviously I’m going first. Laura is only interested the provenance, the botany, the rarity value and the drama of single specimens. Interesting (she yawned) but the horticultural equivalent of self-indulgent navel-gazing as far as I’m concerned, and I have grave suspicion that Caroline’s idea […]