Optimise the potential of your garden this month
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
How grateful we’ve been for some bright calm days this week, as we get on with the big autumn garden-tidy! Cutting back, deadheading, path-clearing and mulching are all more enjoyable if it’s not actually TEEMING with rain! There are plenty of other good jobs to be doing too, such as putting in a new hedge, […]
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10 stunning plants for early autumn
Oh no! The summer is fading. The September equinox has been and gone. We have nothing to look forward to but Halloween Strictly and Christmas musak. But hang on, the garden still has some cockle-warming flowers and foliage out there, and we’d like to tell you about a few that we really rate for bringing sparkle […]
Purple leaved grape vine and Jackman’s clematis ‘There is a harmony in autumn’. So wrote Percy Shelley, and how right he was, I have long noticed that autumn seldom needs help from me. It’s true that I planted these two climbers originally but they were both intended to grow in the opposite direction: one through […]
We have had just some seriously blowy interludes here – tail-end of Storm Boris, apparently (no barracking at the back, please) – and it’s a reminder that the year is moving on apace. The autumnal vibe means there’s all sorts of prep to be done in the garden before the cold sets in, including sowing […]
Why do we garden? Ever since the pandemic lockdowns we have rightly heard bucketloads about Gardening for Well-being. But what does ‘Well-being’ actually mean to you? Is it something about control over Nature, or the very reverse? We 3Growbags have differing views, as you no doubt expected………. There are a myriad of reasons why we’re […]
Leafing through a few gardening magazines recently I’ve noticed articles about planting up containers now – for autumn! I’ve been wondering why on earth anyone would need or want to do this. I suppose that if you don’t have any existing planted containers, you might like to start now but they will have a very […]
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Rock Cakes recipe
More than a biscuit but not as indulgent as cake, and just perfect with your morning coffee, rock cakes have, over the years, become a quasi-mythical currency with us 3 Growbags. I rarely travel on any visit with or to my sisters without a little Tupperware box with a few in (especially to Caroline’s where the […]
The summer fun has died down, the children are back in school, and there is suddenly plenty to do in the garden again. Lots of tidying of course, but other tasks as well such as sowing a green manure, tidying the climbing roses and assessing your garden tool collection… Tooling up Have you ever watched […]
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Time to plan our garden upgrades
Did you all take last week’s blog message to heart? The one that said make some notes about what you’ll do differently next year? We 3Growbags have all resolved on at least three changes we’ll make – maybe they’ll spur you into action on your own patch! Good old George Bernard Shaw said: ‘Those who cannot […]
seven son flower tree Just when the garden is starting to feel a little autumnal, and when many trees and shrubs are telling us that they’ve done their thing (and to be honest, some are starting to look a little jaded), this handsome, seldom grown, large shrub will surely pique the curiosity of any gardener. […]
August Bank Holiday has come racing along, hasn’t it! And for many of us gardeners it heralds fading colours, waving seedheads and too much blackspot. But wait a minute…there are autumn beauties just around the corner! And in the meantime, let’s take stock, make a few cuttings, and harvest the apples…… Softwood cuttings The salvias have been […]
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Seven heavenly scents of summer
Which plants have the most evocative scents of summer? This week we have been sniffing our way around our gardens, and come up with a few suggestions for plants that provide wonderful fragrance in high summer.. At the risk of being called an introverted nerd yet again by you-know-who, gardening is so much more interesting […]
Please read on, and please forget about the common golden rod with shouty, chrome yellow flowers invading every corner of your patch and elbowing out the treasures. This is a totally different ball game – a distinctly different variety and once you’ve got it you’ll be happy to keep it! First off, this one does […]
The changeable weather this summer has certainly kept the grass green and growing! Along with keeping that under control, there are plenty of other gardening tasks to keep us busy such as sowing perennial seeds, harvesting spuds, or propagating succulents… Sowing perennials The main seed-sowing season is well-and-truly over of course, but August and September […]
Late-blooming climbers are a great way to give your garden a real fillip in August! Dozens of perennial flowers are turning into a mass of seed heads, but there are some climbing and rambling plants that will revel in late summer sunshine. We all have our favourites, of course, and we chat about eight of […]
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Courgette Cake
If the extent of your forays into vegetable cakes only stretches to carrot cake, then here is another yummy creation to add to your armoury. This is a moist, tangy cake, wonderful served straight from the fridge on a hot summers day. I’ve tried several different courgette cake recipes over the years and this is […]
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Ricinus communis
castor oil plant: For no good reason I’ve always had a slightly ingrained prejudice against growing the castor oil plant in our own garden – until earlier this year that is. Strolling along the main street of a small village in Somerset, there in the distance I caught sight of a plant table set up […]
We’ve given up expecting a prolonged spell of warm weather this summer, haven’t we? But the dates march on just the same, and August is just around the corner. Help! Still so much to do, so let’s get on with neatening paths, harvesting courgettes and deadheading all the summer bedding, amongst other jobs…. Finding the […]
Gardens need a bit of structure (as do we all, at times!), but many of these features cost a small (or large) fortune. This week we have come up with some ideas for ways to add garden infrastructure without needing to sell off the children or eat bread and gruel for a year……… Yes, you can […]
Everyone loves a blue salvia and I certainly fell for ‘So Cool Pale Blue’. It is one of a series of ‘So Cool’ salvias recently bred in Australia and launched in the UK in 2018. The breeders wanted to produce woody varieties with cool colours on reliable and compact plants. These salvias are also very […]
When is this weather going to cheer up?! I know we all moan like crazy when it gets too hot, but more than two sunny days together would be welcome at the moment. The grey, damp skies may be dismal for us, but there are hundreds of plants revelling in it. And that means there’s plenty of work […]
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10 stunning summer shrubs
Today we’re talking about some of our favourite summer shrubs. Everyone knows about the spring beauties – philadelphus, spiraea, azaleas and the like, and of course, they are lovely. But somehow the summer bushes get overlooked amongst all the mad floweriness of perennials, annuals and bedding. Let’s redress that balance now (I warn you, Laura’s are particularly […]
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Valeriana officinalis
all-heal or cat’s valerian You may already feel confused by its name but this elegant perennial has little to do with the red (or pink or white) valerian that is so commonly seen growing on walls, verges and banks all over the UK – that one is not Valeriana but Centranthus! Having said as much they are […]
Cold pelting rain to stifling, breathless heat within a day – honestly, if our gardens are not confused by now, then I certainly am! Still, that’s what we love about our changeable climate. Isn’t it?! When we are not talking about the weather, there are still gardening jobs to be done – we must cut back hardy […]
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10 plants for a soggy summer
Oh, it’s been WET, hasn’t it! What a damp start to the summer! There have already been so many events affected by the rain – even the Trooping of the Colour didn’t get through unscathed. We know that Caroline is quietly thrilled that we Southerners have been getting Highland weather for months now. But some plants have […]
(formerly Chiastophyllum oppositifolium AGM) lamb’s tail Not for the first time am I made a little grumpy by plant name changes. It took a while to get the old one into my head and once embedded there, I used to relish the occasions when friends would spot it in the garden and ask what it was called! […]
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June’s in bloom! – Grow-how tips
Ooooh, it’s still pretty chilly, isn’t it! But at least we’ve all seen a bit more of the sun this month. And there are a lot more flowers everywhere – hurray! No resting on our laurels yet though. There are jobs to do, like sharpening up the evergreens, pruning the fruit trees, and dead-heading the […]