I’ve managed to find some time to keep up in my garden this week-end. We popped in to John Browns to pick up a few extra plants. My husband made a detour into the BBQ area and picked up a griddle which we christened with some aubergine and mushrooms that evening and he also rather liked the carnivorous ‘Pitcher’ plants that Becky (our houseplant expert) had got hold of that week. They’re perfect for adding a bit of life to his office which is brightly lit and warm, he just needs to keep them damp at all times using rainwater which they’ll thrive on.

I picked up some mixed salad leaves and some bush French beans to fill the gaps in our veg beds and some of my favourite annuals - ‘Cerinthe’ or ‘Honeybush’ - that Gemma our Plant manager managed to track down for me. These amazing plants have glaucous green leaves that contrast beautifully with the dusky blue/purple flowers and were introduced to me when I was just starting out as a gardener by a favourite and very knowledgeable customer. They’re quite large and bushy – around 60cm (24”) - great for filling gaps and bees and butterflies love almost as much as I do!

At Golden Acres we always like to encourage new people into horticulture and love to see our younger customers getting as enthusiastic and interested in plants and gardens as we are. We were delighted to help out when Abbotswood School in Totton approached Cadnam Garden Centre asking for help with some trees and advice for their new woodland area.

 

Here are some of the children receiving a donation of a tree from one of our favourite plant ladies, Julia.

I just had to make the most of the glorious weather this week-end and got stuck into the garden. My sweet peas are now in complete with cane wigwam. My borders are dug over and perennials in. Our soil is very sandy despite the layers of manure we added to it last year so I’ve used plants that like dry, sunny conditions

– Echinops (blue thistly flowers) Eryngium (more blue thistly flowers), Geraniums (bright pink varieties), Helenium (red daisy flowers), Lychnis (silver foliage, bright pink flowers) Rudbeckia (yellow daisy flowers) and Stachys (velvety silver foliage) to name a few of my favourites.

The lawn is re-edged and aerated and one of the veg beds now has carrots, parsnips and radishes sown. My pots have had a tidy and are ready to be planted with the summer bedding in a few weeks time. Phew... Exhausting but its going to look gorgeous!

As it finally looks like temperatures may be climbing I’ve got some serious catching up to do in the garden. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be getting some vegetables into one of my raised beds, a few weeks later than I had hoped but there’s still plenty of time for them to get going & its still too early to plant the beans & courgettes that I’m saving for my other raised bed, I’ll just give that another quick weed then get my favourite Maris Piper potatoes started off in my Potato grow bag.

I can also finally get some sweet peas in. They make very pretty cut flowers that also offer a wonderful fragrance. I’ll buy some ready started (from our nursery of course!) & get a cane wigwam set up for them to grow up whilst I harden them off for a few days. This means leaving them outside in the day but bringing them inside at night to get them used to the lower outside temperatures. Although they’re pretty tough I’ll just keep an eye out for any late frosts once planted out & fleece them if necessary. The most important thing with sweet peas if you want a long & productive flowering season is to keep picking the flowers once they start to appear. If you allow them to set seed the plant will have done its job & won’t produce many more flowers. A little tomato feed every now & again will also give them a boost.

Some of the boys from our centre in Mappleborough Green in Warwickshire are just starting training for a charity bike ride from Mappleborough Green down to Golden Acres West Parley in Dorset. James, Ben, Anthony and Steve will set off on July 6^th and hope to make it to us for the 7^th – quite a challenge. They are doing this in aid of the Acorns childrens hospice who offer a network of care for life limited and life threatened children and young people and their families across the heart of England.

If you would like to sponsor them the link to the just giving web site is :

http://www.justgiving.com/Badger-boys  or you can text 'JABS69' and the amount £.... To 70070. (texts are free)

We’ll keep you posted on how the training goes (we’ve advised them to get plenty of padding!) and how much they manage to raise when they’ve completed the ride.

We are very pleased to be stocking a new range of garden machinery available in most of our centres from Wolf tools. We have stocked a range of their hand and multi change tools for a while and have been really impressed with the quality so we were really excited when we saw their range of electric lawnmowers, trimmers, scarifiers and battery powered tools at a trade show last year.

Wolf has a great reputation. German engineered and around since 1927 they have a wealth of experience behind them and are so confident in the quality they offer a 10 year guarantee on all of their tools. They have also achieved several awards from the Which best buys.

One of things I really like about working with Golden Acres is that we firmly believe in offering good quality products at fair prices. Nobody likes to pay over the odds or buy something that doesn’t do what you need it to and we’re no different. Carrie and I are always on the look out for deals that we can pass on to you and great new products that really perform that we would buy ourselves. We love a bargain!
Here are just a few of the other ways we can help you save money.

Monthly promotions - Genuine offers on products and plants that are topical that month. If you want to know what these are going to be in advance sign up to our e-mailing list and we’ll send you the details just before the offers go out.

Garden essentials - A range of items that we all use in the garden at the lowest possible prices all year round.

Bonus card - When you have a card every time you spend £10 or more in any of our Garden Centres or Coffee Shops you will receive a stamp. When you have 10 stamps the next time you visit we will give you £5 off your purchase! Sign up at any of our Garden Centres and start collecting your stamps.

60 plus savers card - Get a 10% Discount every Tuesday. Customers with the card will be entitled to a 10% discount on all purchases, excluding Gift Vouchers and HTA tokens in both the Garden Centre and Coffee Shop.

Ask for details next time you visit any of our Garden Centres.
Further details including current offers and full terms and conditions are available on our website. http://www.golden-acres-nursery.co.uk

      

On my weekly walk round the nursery I was stopped in my tracks by the beautiful flowers that have come out on our Senetti plants. These gorgeous plants like it cool so are the perfect gap filling bedding plant for this time of year when temperatures can be variable (Senetti will tolerate a light frost but will require a bit of protection if the temperature is really set to drop) The colourful flowers in magenta and electric blue add a real ‘wow’ factor to containers and small borders giving colour and cheer until the time comes round to get the later spring and early summer bedding plants in.

As always we’ve been busy finding exciting new stock to offer you in the Garden centres. We’re just taking delivery of a new range of arbours, swing seats and heavy duty arches. These are really solid and well made pieces that we’d love to have in our gardens... If only I had more room!

Also now coming in we have a new range of water features which appear to be selling as fast as we can get them out. They’re easy to install with a good range that we’ve picked to suit most tastes and budgets. Don’t forget if you need a hand with any of these items our staff are pretty great with advice so pop in and see how we can help you.

With spring trying its best to arrive, its time for us to get going growing our summer bedding at the nurseries. For those of you who are not familiar with Golden Acres, we grow the majority of our bedding plants sold at our Garden Centres at our two nurseries at Ferndown and Landford. We’re very proud of the superb quality and range of plants we grow and have worked hard over the years to ensure we produce varieties that perform the best for you in your garden borders and planters.

As you can see the first batches of little summer bedding seedlings are really starting to get going now and we have started to prick them out into the larger packs ready to go to our Garden Centres in a few weeks time.

How nice it's been the last week, the grounds started to dry out & the sun has put in a long awaited appearance getting us thinking about planting things again. Spring seems to have been a long time coming this year but we’re starting to see buds swell & bulbs & earlier flowering shrubs beginning to bloom. A lot of us gardeners have been cautious this spring & who wouldn’t be after the atrocious weather of last year but we’re just itching to get out there & at last get the garden ready for a new year. Lets make it a great gardening one – we deserve it!

Last week myself & some of our Plant managers took a trip to see one of our favourite Italian stockists – Unfortunately we didn’t make it to Italy itself but we did manage to get a day in North London at their English nursery to see the best of the stock currently on offer & place some orders to bring a taste of sunny southern Europe into our Plant areas. Look out for larger size ‘specimen’ shrubs, exotic palms & stylish topiary appearing over the next few weeks.