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Busy Lizzie Accent Mixed F1
HALF PRICE
72 plugs + 12 Free £8.99

Fuchsia Lady Boothby - world's only
climbing Fuchsia - 3 plants £6.49

Fuchsia Hardy Collection 12 plants 4, of each for
£11.98

Petunia Tidal Wave climbing Petunia
42 plug plants £16.35

Lily Oriental Stargazer - ideal for containers - 6
bulbs £6.49

Geranium T&M's Jackpot F1 - 25
plugs £6.99

Begonia Cascading Apricot Shades F1
2½ to 4 inch, mostly double blooms, 5 plants £9.99, 35 plugs +19 FREE £12.99

Busy Lizzie 'Blue Sky'™
Brand new - Impatiens 'Blue Sky'™ is the world's first multi-flowering, blue
Busy Lizzie.
3 plants - now half price £9.99
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Green up Your Fingers - The Basics
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Cottage
Garden Perennial Bumper Pack
Coreopsis Early Sunrise, Heuchera Palace Purple,
Alchemilla mollis, Armeria Mixed, Hollyhock Chater's
Doubles, Delphinium Hybrids -
18 plants - £14.99
February delivery |
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There's nothing mystical or magical about having "green fingers".
Gardening like everything else is a mixture of inspiration and perspiration, and
is biased towards the second of these.
Green-fingeredness is not
something you are or aren't born with, and it can certainly be learnt. Like
other skills - golf, ballroom dancing, cookery, rock-climbing etc. some people
will be naturally better than others. If you put in the time and effort and are
prepared to learn, then you can develop the verdant digits so envied by
those for whom everything botanical seems to perish as soon as their back is
turned.
Gardening
certainly isn't a black art and can be learnt by any-one, it just sometimes
requires a mental leap into believing that you really can understand these funny
plants and their peculiar foreign ways.
The key is that you
enjoy what you are doing, and want to learn.
Others will differ, but I
think that there are three aspects to green-fingeredness;
Effort
Empathy
Knowledge

Effort - One rule of thumb I use is "don't use a trowel if
you can get a spade in". People frequently garden on too small a scale,
tickling the soil as it's easier, rather than getting deeper down into it. The
effort can be spread over more than one day and is probably better that way so you get to look at your
plants more often. I've always tried to look at it like a free visit to the gym
with an end result other than just a pool of sweat on the floor.
Frequently inspect
your plants so that you know as soon as possible when they need attention. When planting,
prepare the soil well, and do it every time you plant. Weed
frequently, dig out the roots of perennial weeds, don't just cut off the
top-growth. Make borders wide, they look
so much better. Dead-head frequently for a continuous show of blooms. OK you get
the idea now.

Empathy - This is the most difficult aspect to learn. It entails
looking at life from the plants point of view, seeing why it is happy or unhappy
in its current position. Thinking about the impact of flowering, pruning, pests
etc. But at least it's easy because you can relax when you do it.
Plants are living things,
and like other living things - you, your cat, children, parents etc. they have
their foibles and preferences. The commonest reasons that plants fail are that
they are planted in the wrong place (some-times the wrong country) and they are
not allowed to establish themselves properly. Look at them like children when
you first get them, appropriate attention early on is worth ten times the
remedial help when things have gone wrong due to a lack of care.
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Knowledge - While it is certainly very useful to carry around a knowledge
base of plants, soil conditions, pests etc. in your head, it's not necessary
with so many books being available. As long you know
when and where to find the information.
If you can't afford to buy
books then there are plenty of web sites to
get the information from, though books do have their conveniences! Another important
thing is to apply the knowledge up front, think about what plants you are
going to buy before you buy them, and where they are going to go before
you plant them.
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The following is reproduced with thanks to Roger Noakes.
"Christopher Lloyd is almost 80, is a great gardener and
plants man, has an encyclopaedic knowledge and love of plants, writes for newspapers and magazines and has a
number of books to his credit.
So he knows a thing or two. I also like his attitude to gardens and gardening.
Here are two quotes from Lloyd that appeal to me:
- “If
you want to learn how to slow down in your garden, you have come to the right
person.
The first essential is to get other people to do the work for you.
To this end, at least one of them needs to be young and muscular and they
must be either very fond of you or be well paid by you.”
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- “The
garden’s chief attraction is for sitting in and relaxing with champagne or
some other sparkling wine, if it is morning, or some stronger spirit in the
evening, and good conversation with friends.”
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Now
that’s what gardens are for!!
Contrast that with the following: Now I know that some people are
obsessive about their gardens but the other day I read that one Jim Crace who is
a novelist cuts the edges of his lawn with a pair of scissors!!
He explains, “Having tidy edges is important to me.
They make the garden look sharp, spruce and ready for inspection”.
And there I was thinking that gardens were to be enjoyed rather than
inspected like an army private’s kit."
A couple more things;
Don't be afraid, get stuck in!
Don't be impatient!
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