Our first post – May and early June

Welcome to the first post of the Abbotbsury Gardens Plant Centre blog where I’ll be aiming to keep you in the picture with what’s looking good month by month and to tempt you to come and buy something new and exciting for your garden.

As our regulars will know we concentrate on plants – not all the associated garden sundries and always have something a bit more unusual and different to the usual Garden Centre range. If you’ve seen something you like while visiting the Gardens then there’s a good chance you can buy one in the Plant Centre – I’m afraid we can’t promise to have everything as there are an awful  lot of plants in the Gardens – our Curator puts it at over 5000!

This time of year sees all our sub tropical bedding going out into the Gardens for the summer  – the slightly tender plants that bring masses of colour to the borders and containers. We have lots available in the Plant Centre so you can do the same including Pelargoniums, Argyranthemums, Fuchsias and Osteospermums. A favourite for a great flower display is Arctotis Red Devil from South Africa with its brilliant display of deep red daisy flowers that will keep going until the first frosts if you deadhead them.

Or, for something a bit different try using Aeonium Schwarkopf as a specimen in your containers. This amazing succulent is probably our best selling plant and makes a stunning architectural centrepiece in a large pot or even planted out for the summer as we do in the Garden.

Talking of succulents we grow a great range of really unusual species for those of you who like spiky, architectural plants – here’s a picture of some of them in the Plant Centre. Not many are fully hardy but make they make great container plants and are really worth a bit of extra care to grow.

We also have some nice pots to grow them in!

We always try to grow some unusual species so here are a couple that are looking good at the moment.

Geranium palmatum (left below) comes from the Canary Isles and Madeira with beautiful fern like foliage and stunning magenta pink flowers on long stems from late May. It’s easy to grow in sun or light shade and will self seed to form drifts as you can see at Abbotsbury

Second and pictured on the right above is Myosotidium hortensia – the Chatham Island Forget Me Not. This rare plant from the Southern hemisphere looks a bit like a Hosta or Bergenia but produces amazing brilliant blue forget me not like flowers – it’s in flower now in the Gardens. A bit tricky to grow as it does best in a moist, shady site but well worth it.

We got lots of other rarities but this would be a very long post if I listed them all so I’ll just mention that we also have a great range of Ferns, Herbs, Bamboos and Herbaceous Perennials all looking good at this time of year. It’s the time to plant so please pay us a visit  and get something new for your garden. Here’s a view of our very full Plant Centre –

Finally just to mention that our Season Ticket holders can get a great 20% discount on their plant purchases when you show your card so don’t forget to bring it with you. We look forward to seeing you soon.