This week it’s all that glitters in the centres as we get our Christmas decorations and gift stock ready for sale. Just as last year, we have a team of Christmas elves visiting each centre over the next few weeks to make some beautiful, inspirational and very shiny displays to get us all into the festive spirit. With this colder and wet weather we’re having we’re enjoying the cheer it brings.

Its scary how quickly the nights are drawing in now so I’m making the most of the daylight hours at the weekends to complete some jobs in the Garden. I’ve got all of my new borders mulched with a good thick layer of well rotted manure so that the worms can work it in for me over the winter and the veg I planted in July is doing really well. I’ve had my first few leaves of chard and lettuce and it won’t be long before the beetroot is ready either. The new lawn has taken really well, this week-end I’ll give it its Autumn dressing to strengthen the roots for the winter - at least I won’t have to worry about watering it this week!

This week we’ve been looking at yet more new products at one of the largest trade shows of the year in Birmingham. Carrie and I were very excited to meet the very lovely James Wong who is launching a range of unusual edible plants with Suttons seeds called ‘Homegrown Revolution’. We had a long chat with him about the range and tried some of the fruits they had grown, we really liked the cuca-melons – a cross between a cucumber and a melon but really weren’t sure about the ‘Electric Daisies’ which although edible really make your tongue tingle, a bit like popping candy. But now we can say that James Wong made our tongues tingle! What a claim to fame. Our centres at Landford and West Parley will be stocking this range from February.

With the mild weather and still damp ground we have been struggling with weeds and looking at how fast our weed killers are whipping out so are you. There are many products on the market and it can be a bit confusing with which one to choose. If you have a look at our links page on the Golden Acres website and click on  ‘Love the Garden’ you’ll find lots of information and advice to help you get the right product. If you find talking to a person about your garden problems easier, be sure to pop in to any of our centres to talk to a fully trained member of staff who can give you plenty of plenty advice.

We’ve trialled a new variety of viola on the nursery, it’s called ‘Honeybee’ but I think it looks more like a Lion! Either way it’s a really gorgeous little flower.

This week I’ve been up to Manchester to a large plant show to see if there’s anything new and exciting. Amongst all the usual suspects I found a lovely new Mahonia called ‘Soft Caress’ Its a prickle free version of the old Victorian favourite that’s so useful for its evergreen structural presence, pretty and often scented yellow heads of flower and its easy to grow too.

We also looked at some new ranges for next years summer bedding and planted containers, we came away really inspired and with some really good ideas - we can’t wait to see what they look like and whether you think they’re as good as we do, but it’ll have to wait a few months!

It’s amazing how much things can change in a week... We have now got all of our spring flowering bulbs in and I am as usual finding it hard to resist going nuts with them! I have bought some alliums to go in our new borders in the back garden and some miniature ‘pipit’ daffodils for our little patch at the front. I’ll also use some of these in my autumn planted containers so that when they emerge in the spring I’ll get a different and more spring like look.

Along with the bulbs we now have our autumn and winter bedding plants in. Its worth getting these plants in now so that they have plenty of time to establish before the cold weather sets in – I always find they’ll flower much more reliably if planted good and early.

So what to put in my pots for the autumn and winter? We have a lovely selection of young foliage plants with different leave shapes and colours to add interest so I’ll use some of these for structure. I’ll then pop in some of my favourite Violas and some Cyclamen for colour – Over the winter I’ll ensure that I feed the pots regularly with a tomato food, this keeps the plants flowering and the growth nice and hard helping them to cope with the coldest winter days. Drainage is essential in winter planted containers, if the plants get too wet they’ll really suffer. I find it’s worth spending a bit extra on decent compost specifically for containers so that all my efforts aren’t wasted!

After the last blog lots of you wanted to know exactly what we planted in our fruit and vegetable patch. So here’s a list.

Leeks and Beetroot from ready grown seedling packs – These proved to be excellent value at £1.99 per pack. We were surprised at how many we got in each pack and ran out of the space we had allotted them.

Chard, baby carrots, radish and Lambs lettuce direct sown from seed as they should germinate easily in the current soil temperatures

Gooseberry ‘Hinnomaki Red’ great flavour, heavy cropper and very disease resistant – Some gooseberries are prone to mildew

Loganberry – Great flavour and will look ornamental trained along the fence

Jostaberry – I’ve never tried one of these; it’s a cross between a blackcurrant and a gooseberry minus the prickles and sounds delicious.

These are all growing away well now. The mild temperatures and rain are making it perfect planting weather so I shall be out again in a few days getting my autumn tubs planted so they can establish before the cold weather descends...

Now I have my vegetable Garden ready I am itching to get some crops going, but what can I plant at this time of year? I want something I can get quick results from as I’m impatient!

I also want to grow vegetables that we’ll actually use, so I’m going to try Chard (or leaf beet) the variety ‘Bright Lights’ looks great with colourful stems and tastes like spinach, which my husband loves, we’ll also make good use of leeks and beetroot.

Winter lettuce, lambs lettuce, Rocket and Chinese cabbage will do well until November for salads and I’m going to try some radishes and baby carrots as they can crop within 4 weeks.

That’s just what I’m going to try but there are many other vegetables you can grow in August so if your earlier crops have been disappointing don’t give up!

Over the week-end we visited John Browns to get some ready grown Autumn vegetable seedlings and some fruit bushes. As we have limited space in the flat the little packs of seedlings are just perfect meaning we don’t have to germinate them on our limited windowsills, we just planted them straight into the veggie beds after we’d made net cages to stop the local cats using the beds as big litter trays! Some bamboo canes, crop protection netting and cable ties were easy to assemble around the beds and should also keep butterflies and birds off our precious crops.



At Golden Acres we really are ‘Passionate about Plants’. So much so that we grow most of our own bedding plants. At this time of year we review the plants we grew over the Spring and Summer to ensure we keep growing only the best varieties.

Last Wednesday we visited one

of our seed and seedling supplier’s

trials grounds to see what their pick

of the crops were and if any of

the new plants they breed each

year might be good enough

for us to try.

As you can see they have been busy and we were hard pressed to not get carried away ordering all the beautiful new plants they have been breeding.

We took advantage of the weather this week-end and really cracked on with landscaping the garden. We dug out the veggie garden at the far end of the garden and built the two raised veggie beds which I’d bought from our John Browns centre. I’m quite fussy about quality for this sort of thing and was really pleased to have found some strong and sturdy beds that were surprisingly easy to build look great and were relatively in-expensive.

We filled them up with some of the soil we’d dug out mixed with plenty of horse compost to give the soil some bulk and nutrient, well worth the effort and money to ensure we get the strongest healthiest crops.

We then spent a good few hours leveling the other half of the garden ready to build borders and turf.

On a visit to our centre in Landford I picked up this little treasure.

Clerodendrum Prospero.

Our manager David had spotted it on one of the houseplant listings we have through each week. As none of our plant experts had heard of this variety before we decided to order a few out of curiosity and in came these absolutely gorgeous plants. Clerodendrum Prospero was discovered in India by the Danish botanist Nathaniel Wallich. A vigorous flowering plant with exotic but dainty white clusters of hanging flowers that are set off beautifully by the glossy green leaves. It should flower for a good amount of time if kept in a light spot, gets watered regularly but sparingly and has a feed every now and again.

Our receptionist Lin is a very keen Grow Your Own-er and has been nagging me for weeks about when our seed potatoes to grow for Christmas will be in. Well Lin (and all you other Good Life types) they are now in and selling fast! If you plant them now you can have freshly harvested potatoes to go with the Turkey and trimmings on Christmas day.



As the summer continues to be a wash out it's really slowed things up in my garden. We now have the garden itself cleared, rotavated and levelled and have added a good layer of Eco-mix soil improver to add some nutrient and improve the soil structure before we start planting and laying turf. I decided to go with my fern plan in the small gap we have between the decking and the fence and with all the rain we’ve had they’re settling in beautifully. I have always had a love for ferns; it’s amazing how many different variations in leaf shape and colour these graceful foliage plants offer. Most varieties thrive in those awkward shady areas we all have. Some prefer damp situations and some do well in dry places but all are beautiful and will add another dimension to any garden.

Carrie and I are now entering the busy part of our year. We are finalising plans for autumn and Christmas and starting to look at products for next spring and summer. Carries off to look at a garden furniture show next week and a few weeks after that it will be one of the biggest garden industry shows of the year where we hope to find many exciting new products for the centres. We’ve been looking at trends and this year there has been great interest in bird care and in plants and products that encourage beneficial insects into the garden. Our top selling pack of seeds this year was the honey bee wild flower that is especially attractive to bees and bird food has been flying out all year. What a caring lot our customers are!

The unusually damp weather has led to a population explosion of slugs and snails. I was most disappointed to come home to find my beans that had been so full of promise now looking chewed and rather sorry for themselves despite being in a gro bag and in the middle of my decking. I don’t like to use too many chemicals in the garden but its either slug pellets or an empty gro bag and they do work. I am careful where I place them and ensure that I clear up any of the dead wee beasties once the pellets have done their stuff so that other animals don’t come to harm if they eat them. There is a school of thought that birds find pelleted slugs and snails dry and unpalatable but it’s better to be safe than sorry.