THIS DRAW HAS NOW CLOSED. Do keep following us though at The3Growbags on Twitter, Facebook and instagram for more competitions to come.
Categories
Five garden plans for 2025
Still too cold and wet to get stuck into any serious practical work outside, now is the time for dreaming up new features for your garden. Our advancing age (now combined 207 years) appears to have engendered a certain dottiness in our respective plans for 2025, but we’ll let you be the judge of our […]
It’s been quite a winter hasn’t it? Yet even rain does occasionally show off plants to their advantage. There are a few that seem designed to catch raindrops on their leaves and so it was this morning as I walked along the path next to our vegetable patch. These can be rather dismal looking places […]
It always feels such a long cold time until February, doesn’t it! But it’s here now, and by the end of this short month, spring will be waving a tentative ‘Hello!’ from every corner. We hope. Plenty to get on with now though in preparation for that, like re-vamping your borders, mulching pots, and dividing some succulents… […]
Categories
10 annuals we can’t live without
What a pleasure annual flowers can be! From seed to glorious blooming in one year, they represent one of the miracles of plant growth. If you’re planning what to grow this year, we have 10 ideas for you…… No, I love the simple pot marigolds, with their bright cheery faces and their propensity to spread seeds […]
Categories
Frosted Sempervivums
Sempervivums are of course a massive subject, and although usually I’m a stickler for correct horticultural nomenclature I am afraid that I fall into that category of gardener who loves sempervivums but fails to remember all their names. This is due to a number of reasons: some are remarkably similar to each other and I don’t […]
This free draw has now closed but stay tuned – we’ll have more in future!
The middle of January and we gardeners are all the same. Our fingers are already itching to get started on our 2025 garden! Recent severe weather might have kept us indoors, but it’s time to get weaving. How about trying some cuttings in water, sowing some seeds, and pruning some shrubs ………. Cuttings in water Regular […]
Categories
Ever fallen for a plant’s name?
Hands up if you’ve ever bought a plant simply because of its name…….not just us then! This week we’re owning up to being seduced into plant purchases based largely on what’s written on their label. Expect a proliferation of Greek goddesses and literary national treasures from Elaine, some eclectic offerings from Laura. Caroline? No doubt […]
Honeysuckle ‘Winter Beauty’ A gardening friend came round for a coffee the other day and as we sat at the kitchen table where I had placed a stem of this gorgeous honeysuckle, we suddenly realised that we should instead be outside enjoying the sights and scents of the garden in winter. So we pulled on […]
Categories
2 Durnamuck, Wester Ross
If your own plot seems a little overwhelming at times, please visit the garden at 2 Durmamuck on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands. Here Will Soos and Susan Pomeroy have created a simply breathtaking gardenscape of such a scale that it sits in proportion to the mountains and sea loch that frame it. Just […]
Categories
Plants, hedges and trees
Sarah Raven Free Delivery this weekend! Shop this weekend to get Free Delivery on top of 40% discount on Sarah Raven’s bulb collection!Starts: 21 March. Expires 23 March (23:59) YouGarden If you’re contemplating a lemon or orange tree this year, now might be the time to buy one from YouGarden! They have deals on! Expires 31 […]
Categories
Clothes for gardening
Genus Gardenwear Genus produce just the best clothing ever designed for gardening. Researched for practicality and durability, every item is created specifically to make physical outdoor work comfortable and to keep you protected against the elements and your plants. We’ve agreed a 15% discount on ALL their clothes for The3Growbags subscribers when you apply this […]
Categories
Garden tools and equipment
The top five mowers for 2025 Yes it’s grass-cutting time again. If you’re thinking of getting a new mower, have a look at the top five mowers for 2025 according to ‘Which’ consumer magazine. Some of our links are affiliate links – if you buy the product we may get a small commission but it […]
Happy New Year! Are you starting 2025 bursting with good intentions for your garden? So am I! Things are pretty quiet out there at the moment. But there are still tasks to do that will pave the way to your best ever gardening year. How about sorting out that junk-filled shed, persuading the chillies to get through the […]
Categories
The3Growbags Christmas Quiz 2024
It’s Christmas! Here at last after all that crazy build-up! As usual, we have temporarily hung up our writing quills and devised a quiz for you. Pour yourself a cuppa (or a glass of mulled wine), snaffle a mince pie or three, grab a pencil and paper and have a go at these puzzlers. And if you […]
Here are the answers to our Christmas Gardening Quiz. A. ANIMAL WORD SAFARI: (Mole,) MALE, HALE, (Hare,) HALE, GALE, GALL, (Gull,) CULL, CULT, COLT, (Coot), COAT, GOAT, GOAD, (Toad), WOAD, WORD, (Worm) (13 marks) B. GARDENS IN A MUDDLE: C. GARDEN TRIVIA D. PLANT ID: E. CROSSWORD: Hope you all did fantastically well! MERRY CHRISTMAS […]
The mad mayhem of Christmas is nearly upon us now! But try to find time between gift-wrapping and writing grocery lists for a little horticulture. How about looking after your pot-plants? Or planning your sweet pea campaign? Maybe even planting some blackcurrant bushes… I’m not much of a house-plant gal as a rule – un-trendy to […]
I’ve discovered an amazing new way to grow sweet peas that is better for the plants and better for the planet. I love growing sweet peas and always start them off indoors in late winter/very early spring to be planted outdoors in early May once the weather warms up. I’m trying to move away from […]
Categories
Gardening clothes – what to ask for!
What do you wear when you head out to the garden? If only our hobby was like fishing or cycling with a ‘go to’ uniform, we’d know far better what to put on our Christmas list, although frankly The3Growbags in skin-tight lycra? 🫣 That said, the floral, floaty outfits often favoured by Gardener’s World presenters […]
For all of us gardeners this is quite a tough time of the year. After an autumn that was unremittingly dank, rainy and grey, interspersed with occasional fleeting bursts of sunshine, we’re about to embark upon winter proper! That said, this plucky little spurge never complains, it just gets on with looking good. I realise […]
The winter weather has set in good and proper. You are starting a quiet panic about Secret Santas, food shopping and impossible-to-buy-for relatives…. Better turn to some calming horticultural jobs while you can, like sorting out your seed packets, compiling a festive pot or maybe writing your own Dear Father Christmas list… Sorting seeds This is […]
Categories
Evergreens – friend or foe?
Help! Our gardens have descended into a wintery mess haven’t they? We can’t be the only ones wandering around dismal piles of sodden vegetation where once our summer garden was in rollicking full sail. It’s now that evergreens can come to the rescue. Like the bowls of cheese’n onion crisps that you don’t notice till all the chilli […]
Oregon grape ‘Lionel Fortescue’ Say the word ‘mahonia’ and most people will immediately think of the boring old stereotype M aquifolium, and who can blame them? That’s the one most commonly grown as ground cover in challenging municipal settings and it has few redeeming features. However, my chosen plant today is a hybrid (produced by Lionel Fortescue […]
Categories
Your autumn gardening guide
We’ve got some colder weather round the corner now, all right! But here I am telling you to tear yourself away from the cosy TV winter schedules, put your woollies on and get stuck into some gardening jobs! Make sure all your tender plants are taken care of. Check stored fruit. Or perhaps plan for […]
Categories
Great plants for autumn colour
Spindle – Euonymus europaeus A deciduous shrub or small tree with lovely pink and red leaves in autumn. The white flowers turn to bright pink and orange seeds. Callicarpa bodinieri ‘Profusion’ A deciduous shrub with dark green leaves that get a purplish tint in autumn alongside extraordinary shiny purple berries in clusters on the branches. Berberis […]
We gardeners are generally a resourceful lot when it comes to eco-friendly recycling, and here are a host of the tips and tricks we use. Some of them are a touch weird (- mostly Laura’s judging by the presence of a banana skin on a fern in our feature picture above) , but you’d expect that, […]
Categories
Fuchsia ‘Delta’s Sara’
This has been the perfect autumn for fuchsias because these trusty plants like it cool and damp. I purchased five plug plants of ‘Delta’s Sara’ 18 months ago and initially they took a while to get their toes stuck in and I began to wonder if I’d bought a dud. However, after a slow start, […]
Optimise the potential of your garden this month
Categories
Spring bulbs – are they worth it?
Are you finding your inbox is full of all sorts of spring bulb offers at the moment? Dazzling dwarf daffs, bags of crocus corms for a fiver, mix n’ match tulips, all that sort of thing? There are several spring bulbs that don’t cut the mustard – with 3Growbags at any rate – though as […]
We are constantly re-evaluating the plants we grow – are we not? Is this one rather too enthusiastic? Is that one turning out to be taller than you expected? Why doesn’t that one flower reliably? And why does that one need staking when really it should be able to fend for itself? In our garden, […]
Mid-October and the pricey festive season is just around the next corner. Have you got a massive gift-buying list facing you? It can be hard to find the dosh for plants for yourself, but in autumn, there are cheap ways to solve this… End-of-season sales, etc. First things first. Shops are clearing their aisles ready for […]
Wildlife is under threat*. In the UK alone we’ve lost a third of our birds in the last 70 years. How can we help as gardeners? Although most of us are already stocking up on winter bird food, it’s worth reviewing our ‘feathered friend’ strategy because there are new things to consider. Sharing your garden […]
alum root ‘Autumn Bride’ This not-so-common heuchera has often been a contender for my ‘special plant’ slot. I rather dislike that expression ‘all year round interest’ and it’s an unworthy first description of ‘Autumn Bride’ but this great favourite of mine does make a huge contribution to our garden scene and never more so than […]
Categories
Finches Friend Cleaner Bird Feeders
Feeding your garden birds is a win-win; not only do we get to enjoy their acrobatic antics but we’re helping them too, with the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) saying it can ‘improve overwinter survival in a number of species’. But we need to be careful. Having so many birds clustered together for feeding is […]
Categories
Finches Friend bird feeders
Thousands of birds depend on us to provide food to get them through the winter, but many perish due to a disease picked up from the feeders we use. After Trichomonosis wiped out the greenfinches in his garden, Dick Woods, set about creating a high quality, easy clean bird feeder, which is manufactured in the […]