Hi UK Gardeners!
I've spent a lot of time traveling all over your country and have to say, I envy you because you have such wonderful garden centers! Could spend hours in the likes of Notcutts and Webbs. They have so much product whether it's plants or landscaping materials and it's displayed so beautifully. Actually my visits are an exercise in frustration because it's next to impossible to buy the concrete items I'd like and then get it all shipped home...just too heavy!!!
Was wondering if I'm missing some other great garden centers...any recommendations?
I'm a member of the RHS and try to get to the Chelsea Flower Show every other year. Went to the Hampton Court show last year. Your shows are fabulous!!! What other shows would you recommend?
I have a lot of flexibility in terms of when I travel and where I go so don't let that limit your recommendations. Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
Love Your Garden Centers!
Hello jardin! Nice to see a new face here. I'm so pleased you enjoy your visits here.
There must be about 10-12 garden centres/nuresries near where I live. And just because some of them are small does not mean that they are necessarily inferior in any way.
I live in Middlesbrough in the north-east of England, at the mouth of the River Tees and the foot of the Cleveland Hills.
The oldest one near me is Fred Humphreys. Going over 100 years, and a family concern, like many of them round me. Has quite a reasonable choic eof plants to choose from. Has a little shop as well, with seeds, gloves, fertilizer etc. It's diversified into a florist business as well, one of the local Interflora suppliers. devlivering flowers for weddings etc.
These days I tend to go more to Plantarama, a Mum,Dad,daughter family business started 10 years ago. They do trees, garden furniture, water features and so on. I know them very well now and Jane, the daughter, always makes me a mug of tea as a I potter around. They grow their own bedding plants - it's lovely wandering around their greenhouses.
Tanton Nursery is a small nursery a few miles away in the country. Not much apart from plants, but friendly. Cherry Hill Nursery is bigger and has fencing materials and so on. Arcadia Nursery was started a few years ago by an amateur with a passion for fuschias. A great selection of plants, some mail order for fuschias and polyanthas and all the hard landscaping stuff. It also has a gift shop and a tea-room. It's incredibly easy to while away an afternoon there. They also stock bonsai and aquaria. And there's the delightful Windleridge Nursry, smaller but good for cottage gardens and wild-flowers, it also has a gift shop and tea-room. I intend taking a trip out to Windleridge once I get a fine spring weekend (we've got snow here today).
And of course there's the bigger ones like Peter Barretts and Strikes, which have several branches in the north of England but I prefer the family owned ones. Almost all of them offer a delivery service and some of them, like Plantaram will do hanging baskets for you.
There's a few others as well. I don't really go much outside my area, 10-15 miles away, don't know really need to, unless I wanted to build up a specialist collection say. And of course there are the various fairs and shows throughout the year, plus some excellent stalls in the market in Stockton only a couple of miles away, very reasonably priced too. I've got quite a lot from the market.
Of course the local supermarkets stock plants and products too but I don't use them very often as I prefer to buy from peiople who look after their plants - some of the supermaket ones can get a bit grotty as they forget to water them etc.
Plenty of places to chosse from. Can't grumble!
Hi Jardin, what are the garden centres like over there? I'd imagined them to be huge and filled with all sorts of goodies !
i live down in Dorset, and there's lots of little nurseries dotted around,my fave is one hidden in an entrance to a farmyard,it's mainly a fuschia and pelargoniums nursery, but they sell bits of allsorts,you wander in and out through all these odd polytunnels and greenhouses, and around nooks and crannies there's more plants, it's heaven :-)
Abbotsbury tropical gardens is fab too,an Compton Acres,not that I need any more plants as I grow most of my own from seed, but, I'm still open to temptation!Like Northener I prefer family ones, where they pop out of the potting shed to see if you need any help.
I found a great rose nursey too not far from me, and I never knew it was there. The whole family were there, kids and all, he knew loads, recommended ones for my particular needs, that's what makes them great i think,
Well you must come to my garden centre here at home, well hubby is always saying i have more plants than them, so he says we should open and start selling my garden, cheeky monkey.
Talking about roses, if you visit the likes of Fryers in Cheshire, David Austins in the Midlands they open up their fields so you can see all the roses they grow, and these roses will be sent bare roots in autumn. I went to Fryers last summer what a treat, it was paradise to me, he also has a garden centre.
Thank you all for the recommendations...when I return to the UK I'll see where my travels take me and which of your centers might be in the vacinity.
Sueone, I'm an Architect, so design is very important to me. One of the most striking differences I note when traveling to the UK or France is that your retail stores such as Selfridges (sp?), Harrods or in Paris, Galleries Lafeyette and BHV all have merchandise on display that is very high-end in design. Often in the States, this quality of merchandise is reserved for the designer showrooms in which the general public can not shop unless accompanied by a designer. Your stores offer designer quality merchandise to anyone...which is the way it should be as far as I'm concerned!
This is true for your garden centers as well. Since I can't bring plant material back to the US (unless I obtain a special import certificate and pass the rigors of our Dept. Of Agriculture), I find myself "drooling" over the wonderful plant/tree varieties and the artistic way they'r presented to the shopper. I love to look at the displays of patio pavers...get so many unique ideas at your centers. Our centers don't offer even half the variety of pavers found in your centers.
To this day, we still don't see those little round clay balls your centers put under potted plants to help retain moisture. At your shows, so many wonderful types of garden sculpture are offered for sale. We don't seem to have that calibur sold here. You just have more to choose from and all is very well designed.
I visit friends in Bromsgrove and stay at the Grafton Manor. The owner has one of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen. She was the one who turned me on to horse manure and it's benefits for the garden. I now scout-out horse stables near my house for a supply every once in awhile. Rest assured, the United States has many wonderful things, but when it comes to gardening and garden supplies, the UK's retail establishments, in my estimation beats us hands down.
Living in a fairly rural, market gardening area I seem to be surrounded by nurseries and garden centres. I find the large garden centres a bit soulless, like a supermarket, but the little nurseries are wonderful.
I like going to the small plant fairs in the summer, the agricultural shows are sometimes good for plants and structures for the garden too but you have to pick the right ones for this. I also like to wander round other peoples garden with the various charity schemes like NGS and St John's Ambulance.
hi Jardin,I must admit the designer bit is true, there's even been court cases as the supermarkets want to be able to sell designer wear at knock down prices,and they,ve got a bit of opposition.!One store you must see as an architect is Liberty's in London, I love going there just to look at the building(that is, if you like that sort of thing )Never mind the sumptuous fabrics inside, I always used to come away from there with yards of the stuff ! not knowing what i'm going to use it for, but just the feel, colours, and designs were enough to make me buy it.
Now you are talking my language, love horse manure, go most weekend for it, can get as much as i want all free all well rotted, and boy are my roses and perennials gonna be looking georgeous this summer or i will eat my hat.
As a teenager in the early 60s there were no garden centres, you could only buy via newspaper adds or scrounge off friends and relatives just like it had been done over the centuries, and then we became richer more materialism etc so this was born the big garden centres, who you will find get all their stock from abroad mainly Holland, am not really keen on them but will go to see what plants they are selling off cheep and i can bide my time.But i do love the family nurseries who propogate most of there stuff themselves. Mind you getting to the stage in my garden where i wont need anymore plants, it has took me 4 years to get to that stage.Only need a few annuals in fact but have bought loads of seeds.
To All,
I would be in hog heaven if I could have your climate to grow roses in even if I didn't have a source of horse manure. As it is now, here in Minnesota, unless we grow the winter hardy roses (of which we're beginning to see more and more varieties developed to withstand our frigid winters, but the blooms are still quite small) I have to bury each non-hardy rose under the soil. It's called the "Minnesota tip". You dig a trench maybe 1-2 feet deep out from the base of the rose (to a distance = the height of the rose), tie the rose branches together w/ twine, then go to the side opposite the trench and on the back of the rose and plant your shovel around the root ball and "tip" the whole rose into the trench. Then cover everything with soil so no branches are exposed. In the spring you then dig everything out and position the rose in its vertical position. This is a ton of work because the soil gets compacted around the branches and you have to be careful not to damage the branches when undigging the bush.
This is true for some climbing roses as well. So you see growing roses in Minnesota takes a lot of dedication and muscle power. Also I have to plan my garden layout to accommodate the trench for burrying the roses mixed in with the other flowers.
Since you have a ready supply of horse manure you may not need my following tip, but then again you might want to try it if such a product exists in the UK. I learned from a champion rose grower (here in Minnesota) to use Alfalfa meal around my roses. It seems the Alfalfa has a hormone in it that allows plants to take-up the other fertilizers better. It works wonders not only on my roses, but also other flowers benefit as well. I had an Asiatic lily clump grow to 6 feet tall this past summer when most of these plants typically grow only to 3-4 feet tall! I buy the meal from a seed co-op in 40 lb bags. I just spread it around the soil, scratch it in a bit and let the rain leach through it bringing the nutrients to the plant roots.
Sueone, I've been to the LIberty store and totally agree, it's a beautiful store. I, too, like the fabric section!!
I'm going to have to get a map-out so I can visualize where you all live. That way when I return to the UK, and if we're traveling outside of London, I'd love to meet you all. It's fun getting to know people in the places we like to travel. We know a family that lives in Brompton Hacket (just NW of Stratford-Upon-Avon). Their daughter rides in horse shows and they raise sheep. I'm a city girl, but I just love farm animals so I have a ball when I get a chance to see lambs. When I was in grade school I had a pen pal (her name was Ann Barwise) and she lived in a little town in the NE...believe it was called Barnard Castle. As kids so often do, we lost interest in corresponding especially when boys became more interesting and I lost track of her. Someday I though it would be interesting to visit her town and see if she still lived there.
To me the best garden centre are the English/British gardens, but the back gardens are usually the best. If you came to mine, in the front you would see a pretty little lawn with some plants around it and a few patio pots very conservative but the back garden is just chocabloc with plants altogether with no space between as somebody once said gosh its a jungle sure is and i am proud of it ,just hate lawn, cant stand lawns as you can gather i hate lawns and all that stupid work, you feed it water it, guess what it grows so you have to cut it.