Hanging baskets – time for a bit of a refresh

When the garden is in bloom there is no better antidote to the blues. Bright, colourful flowers and a bit of sun may just be the best thing in the world. However, this weekend saw us give in and accept that the hanging baskets needed a wee bit of help. They weren’t horrendous, I mean there was stuff in them, they were just a bit… lacking.

I take full responsibility for it though, I was a bit over eager to get some colour out there after the winter and I’m afraid to say I threw the poor little baby petunias out of the greenhouse a few months too soon. Poor wee souls, shivering away in the cold.

So they were a wee bit under developed.

Oh no!!!! A trip to the garden centre, how horrendous! NOT!!!

It’s a bit like when you go to Ikea, you go for a specific thing, like some tea light candles and come home with a Billy bookcase. Well a trip to the garden centre is exactly the same with us. We go for some petunias for the hanging baskets and end up with 100 quid’s worth of plants and two planters. Watch the video and see how much we ARE NOT miffed by this LOL.

We did our usual and stood at the entrance with Kate saying, “we only need one trolley. We’re only getting some plants for the hanging baskets.” To which I, as always, replied, “yeah we always say that and then you send me for another trolley cause we’ve filled the first one.”

Guess what happened? Yep two trolleys.

So off course, that mean we HAD to fill them. It turns out, it was just as well, but I’ll tell you all about that in a second.

So petunias for the hanging baskets, you guys know by now what our favourites are, so as usual, my favourites: easywave

And Kate’s favourites, starry night

We also got something new, you’ll have to trust me on this cause in the photo it looked just like the pink and white easywave petunias, but it’s not quite. In fact it’s not a petunia, although I can’t for the life of me tell you what it is. It was labelled up as a trial and had “???” Where the name should be. But it’s got flowers like smaller versions of the petunias but the leaves and more like succulent leaves and stems. We thought we’d give it a go though.

So I was telling you that it was a good thing that we bought extra plants. Well… we came home and got stuck in. Kate was tidying up the rockery and I was sorting out the planting out back. That includes two big wooden planters which we’d bought new plants for. They are full of aquilegias which die back in late summer which leaves the planters looking as bit empty, so we got some new bits and bobs for them. While I was arranging the plants, not planting or touching the planters in anyway, I heard a thwump noise. I turned around to see one of the planters had just basically disintegrated. One side had completely fallen apart and the soil and plants were trickling out. I SWEAR IT WASN’T ME!

Turns out the wood had just rotted and eventually just given in. They are 7 years old to be fair. So it was a quick jaunt out to replace the planter. Actually we replaced both cause on inspection the other one was pretty much rotten as well.

Means we have a couple of nice bright new planters though which match the colourful pots we have around the garden.

As well as all this fun, we got a few new plants that are just the perfect photography models (there are just some plants that are wayyyyyyy more photogenic than others). So here are some of our new gazania.