If you have ever bought plants or gardening equipment on line then like me you have probably found your way onto many mailing and emailing lists. At this time of year it means that every day new offers seem to come along as companies are reducing the price of the plants that are still on their 'shelves' or of newly rooted cuttings. Restraint has to be shown in the face of these offers as some can offer amazing savings
For instance one email received last week was Thompson and Morgan's offer of 100 allium bulbs for £5. very tempting but I don't really want 100 alliums, however I did share the link on my blog just in case someone out there fancied taking up the offer.
I am not always as restrained though as recently I ordered some plants following an advert for an offer from Hayloft. They were advertising 10 named variety phlox plants for £10 and this fitted in with my planting plans and so I went to the website to check the offer and decided to order a pack.
These arrived as small bare rooted plants which I thought I had taken a photo of but obviously didn't. I'm growing them on in pots for a while before planting out in the garden. Here they are newly planted.
They are now growing away and have been placed in the cold frame.
I also ordered 10 dianthus which were also £10. These arrived as small plug plants.
If you have ever come across offers in newspapers or magazines then it is likely that the offers are being provided by Hayloft. Whilst browsing their site I came across a section called Magazine Offers. If you click on the Magazine Offers tab on their home page you will see a list of publications that have had Hayloft offers in the past. Many are still available directly from the website (you don't need to buy the magazine!)
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You can pick up some real bargains if you're prepared to grow them on yourself. I much prefer to do this than spend a fortune on just one plant. I'll definitely take a look at the link.
ReplyDeleteGo to the magazine offers tab, Jo and the Gardeners World option has quite a few offers - some of the others only have one or two and many are repeats of hose found elsewhere.
DeleteThe thing I like about collections is that it encourages you to buy a selection of same type of plants which adds something to a border. We bought a penstemon collection for the front garden and it was a fraction of the price of buying five individual named plants.
It’s great you are sharing your online finds, Sue and how you have found the products too. They are growing on well too. I like to see delivery photos of plants :-)
ReplyDeleteGosh… hearing about your bare root cuttings has taken me back the years to my first garden and a bare root collection of alpines – a good number of them too. It’s fun growing the bare roots. I must try it again myself :-)
I must admit I was initially disappointed by the phlox, Shirley as I thought they would come like the dianthus did. They just had very small pale looking shoots and as they came before the dianthus so I wondered if I had done the right thing! Anyway I potted them and they quickly started to grow new shoots - I'm now really pleased with them.
DeleteYou need to be careful about removing the ones in the plastic 'cells' as the cells are marked with letters that enable you to identify the varieties.
I've had a lovely selection of plants from these offers in the past. I'm going to take a look now & aim for a revamped front garden. Thanks Sue
ReplyDeleteThere is just too much choice, Jo be careful
DeleteSue, anyone who didn't know otherwise would think from reading some of your posts like this that your garden was at least 5 acres! Where do you find space to put all those lovely bargain plants??
ReplyDeleteBeing a cynic myself, I reckon that some suppliers use Special Offers as a way of offloading their poor-grade leftover stuff which wouldn't otherwse sell. And they know that customers might be reticent about complaining about the quality of Special Offer goods!
Yes I thought that too at first Mark but I have risked it before and got some good plants. I guess a company like this has a reputation to maintain.
DeleteI wish I did have 5 acres.
I never answered you about space did I - I like to cram plants in but also there are bits of the garden that are being rehashed which hopefully you will hear about in due course.
DeleteI've had mixed luck with these plants that are on offer. I bought a Lavender selection as plug plants, they looked healthy when they arrived, I potted them on as per instructions but they all died. I complained to the company because although it was an offer I still expected at least 10% to make it, and they sent me another load FOC. One of those new bunches survived but is still slowly make any kind of growth a year later. I also got some Iris rhizomes through one of the offers but again only one survived. the company agreed to send more but then ran out so reimbursed me instead.
ReplyDeleteI had amazing results with the dianthus offer though and all the plants have done amazingly well. I meant to take up the latest offer in gardeners world but never got round to it.
I suppose at least you got money back, Linda but it is disappointing isn't it - was it this company too?
DeleteNo doubt the phlox will be wonderful, I love them. Dianthus too, they remind me of my childhood garden.
ReplyDeleteI'm going for perfume CJ. Have you noticed dianthus, roses and even lots of freesias sold as cut flowers don't have any perfume at all? I wonder if this is health and safety gone mad in the it may cause hayfever and they could be sued by shoppers! The perfume from dianthus is supposed to lift depression and anxiety.
DeleteThanks for those links Sue, I'm on the hunt for new plants AND inspiration for the total redesign of the back next spring.
ReplyDeleteIt's great having plants already to go out next year.
Yes, they are swallows, I'm forever mixing up my swallows, swifts and house martin chicks, they look so similar when they are fledglings. I can only really tell whats what when I'm actually feeding them, then the size difference is more apparent.xxxx
It is Snowbird. I hope I can also take some cutting from them next year to maybe have some as cut flowers too.
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