Shopping Expedition!
Went to Crews Hill in Enfield today looking for plants for 3 different parts of the garden.
Crews Hill is a great place to visit as on one road (Cattlegate Road) there must be about 15 garden centres and pet stores one after the other- you can spend hours there if you felt like it (and quite often we do!).
So apart from being a great way to spend a sunday (in my opinion! not the other halfs!) we were looking for plants for:
The Shade Bed
The Butterfly Bed
and the Grass/Prairie Bed
Now I have to say even I was surprised at how many plants I bought today- but in my defence most were in the reduced section for £1 or £2- and all the plant I bought were ones I had pre-written down on my list. Well apart from the Eremurus and the Maidenhair Spleenwort(Asplenium trichomanes) but they were just cool plants!
We first stopped at Woldens where I picked up a couple of Achillea 'Credo's which are a pale lemon yellow colour and some Sea thistles (Eryngium planum) for the Grass garden, and a yellow Eremurus and and 3 small pots of Ox-Eye daisies for the Butterfly border. For the shade border I got 4 Athyrium otophorum 'Okanum' ferns, and Maidenhair Spleenwort. And also a double purple Hellebore for my mum for mothers day.
Onto the 2nd nursery Oz Ferns- here we picked up an Oregano and Chives for the butterfly border, and 2 Dryopteris alata and 1 D. affinis ferns. The best buys were some great Stipa tenuissima grasses for £3.50- i bought 6 pots of this. Also some over flowing pots of Bugle for ground cover the shade border (and its flowers are great for insects).
Went to Crews Hill in Enfield today looking for plants for 3 different parts of the garden.
Crews Hill is a great place to visit as on one road (Cattlegate Road) there must be about 15 garden centres and pet stores one after the other- you can spend hours there if you felt like it (and quite often we do!).
So apart from being a great way to spend a sunday (in my opinion! not the other halfs!) we were looking for plants for:
The Shade Bed
The Butterfly Bed
and the Grass/Prairie Bed
Now I have to say even I was surprised at how many plants I bought today- but in my defence most were in the reduced section for £1 or £2- and all the plant I bought were ones I had pre-written down on my list. Well apart from the Eremurus and the Maidenhair Spleenwort(Asplenium trichomanes) but they were just cool plants!
We first stopped at Woldens where I picked up a couple of Achillea 'Credo's which are a pale lemon yellow colour and some Sea thistles (Eryngium planum) for the Grass garden, and a yellow Eremurus and and 3 small pots of Ox-Eye daisies for the Butterfly border. For the shade border I got 4 Athyrium otophorum 'Okanum' ferns, and Maidenhair Spleenwort. And also a double purple Hellebore for my mum for mothers day.
Onto the 2nd nursery Oz Ferns- here we picked up an Oregano and Chives for the butterfly border, and 2 Dryopteris alata and 1 D. affinis ferns. The best buys were some great Stipa tenuissima grasses for £3.50- i bought 6 pots of this. Also some over flowing pots of Bugle for ground cover the shade border (and its flowers are great for insects).
Last visit was to the Gardening Club next door, you have to be a member to go in here- but its well worth the £5 yearly entry. I made a beeline for the reduced plants trolley by the tills and to my delight found a whole trolley full of grasses and ferns reduced to £1 or £2 a pot. Excellent!
So here I decided to splash out and bought loads of them- they were practically giving them away i told myself! The ferns were £2 each- i got 9 more Athyrium otophorum 'Okanum' (i know this is now 12 in total- as id bought 4 earlier! but they are great plants and i want to go for the block planting look), 2 Lady ferns (Athyrium felix-feminia), 3 Athyrium felix-feminia 'Friselliae' (i dont actually really like this fern but didnt realise what it was until i got it home), and 3 Polystichum setiferum (i love this fern!).
The grasses were £1 each and so I got 3 Carex 'Bowles Gold' for the shade border, 3 Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Hameln', and 3 Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' for the grass border.
I also picked up 2 Sedum 'Herbstrude' aka Autumn Joy, and a Yellow Lupin for the butterfly border too.
Most people were looking in our trolley very curiously- to them it probably looked like we had a load of dead plants in our trolley!
Oh plus 3 bags of manure, 2 bunches of tulips, and a big 20kg bag of Chicken Food.
So it hadnt even got to 11:45 yet so I had done very well I reckoned! So we went home (i doubt anything else would have fitted in the car!
Back at home and unpacked we had about 20 mins before it started to rain so we fixed the last 2 pieces of trellis on the fences and let the chickens out for a run around. Herminone got spooked by something and started squawking alot but couldnt see what she was moaning about- i got everyone back inside though when it started pelting down as didnt fancy staying out in the rain to supervise them!
Planning on a relaxing evening in front of the tv and the Natures Greatest Events program- think its the sardines tonight! :)
Wow Owen, I went to a local GC today but managed to restrain myself to 3 Lilium 'African Queen'. I've bought loads of bulbs this year, although I just hope I get around to planting them this year! Am looking to create a more consistent display of colour though so hopefully there'll be plenty to go around.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to seeing all these bargains planted!!
:)
ReplyDeleteI just cant resist reduced plants!
I'm looking forward to more flowers this year- id thought i just wanted leaves but im looking forward to some cottage garden flowers this year!
If you're lucky, you'll have one of the Polystichum setiferum that produces little plantlets halfway down its fronds. All you have to do when you spot one is to pin that leaf to the ground and it'll root in a few weeks. It's difficult to do with mine as they're all in pots, but division is no problem either.
ReplyDelete