Alan's Bio:
Alan, a 3rd generation Nurseryman has been working on the family nursery for 22 years. His experience in gardening includes, designing award winning RHS displays, maintaining gardens, big and small and growing plants commercially for garden centres and the gardeners alike. These are his top picks for October 2023.
Alan's top new plants for Spring 2024
What a wonderful gardening year 2023 has been, the weather has really be on the side of us gardeners, not too hot or too cold. Many plants have thrived this year and lot of our customers have told us how their garden has looked the best it ever has. Some of this is down to the brilliant breeding done by plant breeders all over the world. While the world was locked down during covid, this allowed many of these breeders to work harder than ever, plant breeding by its very nature, is often a solitary pursuit.
The fruits of their labours are continuing to impress, and we have some cracking plants to introduce to you for 2024. I thought I would put together a list of some of our highlights, for the coming spring. If you love your flowers, these will be perfect for you.
Thunbergia: Sunny Susy
This wonderful fast growing annual climber is perfect to get a bit of height on your patio or decking. The heart shaped leaves will quickly grow up a cane or trellis and are soon joined by the flowers. In the Sunny Susy collection, you have a lovely choice of striking colours. Each colour has a deep purple or black centre, surrounded by vibrantly coloured petals. This is a very easy to grow plant, which will add colour to your garden from late May until September.
Geranium (pelargonium): TwoinOne
This range as a whole is not new, but there are some fantastic new colours, and the TwoinOne Geraniums (pelargoniums) were one of our customers favourite additions in 2023, so we felt it deserved an inclusion in the list, with the even more extensive colour range. The TwoinOne range is the result of painstaking breeding, these are crosses between and upright geranium and trailing geraniums. The result is, a more vigorous plant that is larger than a standard geranium and really does put on a show. Ideally suited to large containers, borders, and window boxes. Here at the nursery were really surprised how vigorous these plants are. They fill a large container so well, plus we still had flowers being produced in November when planted in April. WOW
Bracteatha: Helian Series
This plant is an old favourite on the nursery, dating back when we grew a different range of the same plant, for cut flowers. This new range of Bracteantha has a lovely compact habit and is very well suited to growing in containers and window boxes. The flowers have an almost straw like texture and are available in colours that will remind you of some of the best sunsets. A really great addition to your patio or decking.
Trailing Geraniums: Double Flowering
For hanging baskets which have the longest flowering period Geraniums are hard to beat. Over the years the varieties have got better and better. We have curated a special collection of double and semi double, flowering varieties which will not fail to impress. The collection contains the lovely deep velvety maroon flowers of Tommy, the classy, subtle pink of Vintage Rose and much more. This collection is perfect if you love you trailing geraniums.
Verbena: Hurricane
A beautiful new range of verbenas, these dual colour flowers are semi trailing, making them perfect for containers as well as baskets and window boxes. The flowers are where this plant stands out, not only will they treat you to colour from early spring until the end of summer, but they really are also stunning. Each colour has a pure white centre, which then have a different colour edge to the petals. As you would expect from a verbena, they are very easy to look after and will cope with our ever-changing summers very well.