What comes to mind when you hear the word ‘poppy’? Is it the beautiful swathes of red field poppies (Papaver rhoeas) that germinated in the churned-up battlegrounds of Flanders and became such a symbol of remembrance and hope? Or perhaps it’s the powder-puff flowers of opium poppies (Papaver somniferum) with their wonderful seedheads so beloved of…
Category: Growbag Blog
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.
Categories
It’s open season on garden-visiting!
We are into full garden-visiting time now – hurray! And it’s our mission this week to encourage everyone to get out there and explore some spring gardens, big or small – Covid restrictions have been lifted, the tulips and peonies are smiling, and there is cake to be munched! How do you go about it? Step…
‘Gardening for Wildlife’ is a wonderful concept and one we should all be embracing, but where to start? Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and our advice is to focus on some simple steps to encourage particular groups to start with. So this week we 3Growbags are going to take it in turns to…
Categories
Who doesn’t love a hardy geranium?
There is simply nothing as dependable as a hardy geranium! We’re talking here of the rugged, low-growing, outdoor types rather than their glamorous cousins, the pot plant pelargoniums. Now is the perfect time to plant them. Or better still, put a quick spade through your neighbour’s and get a division for your own garden! You…
This week we are all about prepping our gardens for the razzmatazz of spring and summer ahead! Come on, no more shilly-shallying – we need to get OUT THERE. These are the jobs we are determined to tackle right now, and we think you should too……… It’s me, the proper gardener, up first this week. I…
Wow, how exciting is this – we actually had a proper day out last week, meeting real people at the annual Garden Press Event in London! The event’s aim is to give us a chance to review new gardening products and mix with the movers and shakers of the horticulture stratosphere (don’t think Caroline got…
Categories
Ten of our best spring plants
We’ve all learnt that gardening can be a panacea in troubled times so let’s take a little break from the world outside and focus on what brings us joy. This week we’ve each chosen a selection of our best spring plants to lift spirits and for a moment, concentrate on the good things in life.…
Categories
Why you should keep a garden diary
How good is your garden admin? Do you make a note of all the new plants you’ve bought and where you’ve planted them (Elaine) Do you keep the labels? Do you file the delivery slips of your on-line purchases? Do you actually know even the approximate common name of the chunk of plant you have…
Categories
Our top 10 early spring bulbs
Doesn’t it lift your spirits when the first of the early spring bulbs start to emerge? Quietly at first with the gentle green and white of the snowdrops, then other colours start to flow in as the aconites and crocus get going. But as usual we three Growbags disagree on which are the best varieties,…
Categories
Time for a new garden look?
Is there a style of garden that you’ve always admired, such as a gravel garden, or formal 18th Century, prairie, colour-themed, jungle or cottage, but never really followed it through? Most of us end up with something of a hotch-potch of plants we liked in the Garden Centre, were given by friends, will grow in our…
Categories
Gardening trends for 2022
When the Royal Horticultural Society publishes its predictions for the year ahead, you’ve got to be curious. In fact the ‘voice’ of gardening produced 53 suggestions at the New Year – from the rising popularity of ice baths (nope nor us), to a boom in multi-stem trees and the return of crazy-paving. Not read the…
It’s Christmas! It’s time to put the secateurs down, pour a glass of something you fancy and tackle The3Growbags’ Prize Garden Crossword. We asked Elaine to make it easy but there were still 10 clues that Caroline couldn’t answer (no great surprise there). We’re offering a prize of six fabulous Liberte houseplant pots to one lucky winner so…
Ooooh, I love the feeling of bringing the garden into the house to share in the fun, excitement and warmth of Christmas! There are lots of plants that look wonderful in December and can be used for very special decorations. We 3Growbags have each got our own favourite plants to use at this time of…
Categories
Laura’s Woodland Edge Plants
Here is a list of plants that I have collected over the years that seem to be happy in a shady bed that has a reasonable amount of organic matter added and is mulched annually with leaf mould or similar. Perennials Aquilegia ‘Ruby Port’ – my favourite granny’s bonnet, which seems to come true from…
Categories
Books every gardener should read
Blogs, vlogs, Insta, Facebook, Twitter – they’re all very well but sometimes, and especially over Christmas and New Year, there’s nothing better that curling up with the comforting, tactile engagement of a good book. This week we’re each going to make some recommendations about the authors who make the best company on these long dark…
‘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…
Categories
We’re flying the flag for iris!
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…
Categories
Has it really been five years?
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…
Categories
Six new garden features to consider
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,…