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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]