Hello and welcome to our garden notes for May.
This month we celebrate and remember our Mums, so firstly I’d like to wish all the mothers out there a very happy Mother’s Day. I hope you get to spend a lovely day with your family and friends.
What To Get Mum This Mother’s Day
Flowers and or flowering plants are a lovely way to say thanks to your mum for her love and support throughout the year. The flower most associated with Mother’s Day is the Chrysanthemum; they are available as living plants at garden centres and as cut flowers at any number of roadside stalls. Plants come in a wide range of flower styles and colours, best of all your mum can plant them in her garden afterwards. A sunny spot, pruning after flowering, a regular feed and she will have a hardy small shrub that will last for years!
Other popular plants are Cyclamen, which also comes in a range of styles and colours, Moth Orchids and Anthuriums (also known as Flamingo Flower). In reality any plant; whether it is for indoors, a pot on the patio or out in the garden somewhere, they are a wonderful gift that will long outlast a bunch of flowers.
If you do get your mum a plant, then you might like to buy her a nice pot to put it in. We have a large range of beautiful cover pots and planters, for both indoors and outside, they will complement any plant and complete the package. A voucher is also a good way to go if you’re not sure what to buy, available for any amount and anything throughout the store.
Current Planting Conditions and What To Plant
We’ve had a few days with showers and light rain but overall, it has been a very dry start to the year. The rain we have had is not enough to soak the soil and get down into the root zone, so don’t relax the watering just yet. What it has done though is bring out the snails which are having a lovely feed on gardens now. Control them by hand if you like or bait, but be mindful about pets and native animals. If you do have animals, make sure to use a pet-friendly control like “Eradicate” which is iron-based.
These showers have certainly kicked the weeds into action too. Try to get onto them early before they get too big either by manually weeding or spraying. The ground is still warm too so any winter veggies planted now will still make good growth before the cold hits. The same applies to citrus, new season stock is in stores this month, and they need to be planted too while there is still warmth in the soil. If you plant citrus into “cold” soil they will sulk and not grow, sometimes it can be a year or more before they get going. Choose from all the lemons, limes, oranges, mandarins and more.
Hibiscus is another plant that will appreciate being put in now. There are many varieties available in all sorts of colours; Hawaiian types which grow to about 1.5 m and some of the older larger types which can get to 3 m. These can be kept shorter by pruning if need be. The smaller growers are magnificent in pots in warm sunny spots if you can’t put them in the ground.
In our May catalogue, you will find Staghorn fern listed and we also stock Elkhorn ferns. These both come already mounted onto tree fern backings ready to hang up on your patio or under a tree. Stags form one large plant whereas Elks produce clusters of plants which can be divided. They naturally grow on the branches of tree canopies or on fallen logs, so they are used to periods of dry weather. I water mine about once a week in the warmer months but perhaps only monthly during Autumn and winter. Don’t overfeed them! Seaweed solution and an organic fertilizer like Rapid Raiser occasionally is plenty.
As I said last month, Autumn is by far my favourite season in the garden, you get those beautiful leaf colours, some amazing flowers and it’s generally more comfortable being outside. You just need an extra layer on the cold days! Get out and enjoy your garden this month before it gets too cold and hopefully, we’ll see you in store where we can get your garden looking immaculate with some of the great plants that are around at the moment.