I’ve had some frustrating experiences in garden centres recently and I’m becoming increasingly disillusioned with them as places to spend my cash. We’re bombarded with the word choice whether it’s where to have an operation, which school you send your children to or the seemingly infinite number of breakfast cereals on offer. And yet you wouldn’t think so if you visited a selection of garden centres.
My attention has been somewhat diverted this spring and summer with all my seed sowing and plant nurturing energies focussed on the plants needed for my book rather than my garden. Once the plants were all happily growing away at the plot I noticed that my garden needed a bit of a lift. Gaps had appeared where bulbs had died down and I didn’t have any plants lurking around to fill these spaces. I didn’t want any perennials, just something that would provide lots of flowers over a long period of time. I didn’t think it would be a problem to find something and paid a few visits to my local garden centres. How wrong could I be.
Meadow style planting on a roundabout courtesy of Newport City Council
I have never been a fan of bedding plants. It seems like gardening for Lilliputians. So many lovely plants that have been bred to be small, which end up losing any charm, and often in the process any pollen and nectar too. I appreciate that some of them have a place in hanging baskets and possibly certain municipal planting schemes. Although I’d much prefer it if councils used more of the meadow-style planting ideas championed by Sarah Raven and Nigel Dunnett. Garden centres and nurseries across the country though are stuffed with bedding plants from April through to June. If you want anything remotely different, something with a bit of height to sway in the breeze or something which provides food for pollinating insects so that the garden is buzzing with life then there’s very little choice in terms of annuals at all. There’s tray upon tray of begonias which I hate with a passion and insipid looking lobelias and alyssum. These tiny, tight, compact plants make me think of a character from Dickens, their face all wizened and screwed up and unhappy with the world.
Cosmos ‘Candy Stripe’
Plants like Cosmos ‘Candy Stripe’ on the other hand, now there’s a plant to love. Frothy, feathery foliage, stems at a height that you can see the flower without having to crouch down and put your back out and lots of pollen for passing bees, hoverflies and butterflies. What about cornflowers, ammi, daucus and rudbeckia? These are all great plants. Now I know what you’re thinking, annuals are so easy to grow from seed and cheap you’d be crazy to buy them as plants from the garden centre. The thing is not everyone has the space, knowledge or inclination to grow these plants from seeds. Even if you do slugs often scupper your plans and sometimes it’s too late to resow and start again. There are times when I’m willing to pay for the quick fix, the plant that someone else has grown and has got it to the stage that I just need to plant it in my sunny garden and within weeks it’ll be flowering. And what about biennials? So many people forget to sow them in June and July probably because they are recovering from the frantic April and May seed sowing and pricking out bonanza. But, come September the only biennials for sale seem to be wallflowers and bedding ones at that. It’s a real pity as there are so many great plants that garden centres and nurseries could sell but they don’t.
Disappointed by the lack of imagination on the annual plant front I turned to dahlias thinking there would at least be a good selection of those. There were a few at the first garden centre but none that really appealed so I thought I’d give some other places a try. With each visit to another garden centre I saw exactly the same dahlia varieties on offer. It was the same with other plants too. So much for choice. Availability and choice for the garden centres themselves is clearly driven by what the wholesale nurseries are offering and, unfortunately for us the consumers, this means less choice rather than more. It feels as if the garden centre industry has succumbed to a sort of supermarketification. I have never really liked the diversification into sickly smelling candles, dubious fashion and travel sweets that so many garden centres have followed in recent years, but I accept that a seasonal business needs to look at other avenues for income. My real gripe is when they don’t get the core element of the business, the reason they are there in the first place, right. I see no point in having 5 independent nurseries within a 30 mile radius when they all sell exactly the same stock.
The online nursery Crocus offers a couple of plants that I see as the new wave of ‘bedding’, taller plants, loved by insects such as Ammi majus and Orlaya grandiflora but mail order isn’t always what you’re looking for on a Saturday afternoon when the time allows for a spot of gardening and inspiration takes over. This is when the local garden centre should come into its own but for me it so rarely does.
Specialist nurseries can be great. Knowledgeable owners and well looked after plants and the specialism means a much wider variety of plants to choose from. But I’ve yet to find one that has tackled the traditional bedding plant market and tried to offer something different. If you know of somewhere I’d love to hear about it. Wildlife friendly gardening is one of the biggest trends at the moment and annuals are some of the best plants for attracting insects and yet the garden centres, or certainly the ones around me, have yet to catch on. I wonder whether it’s because trays of small plants such as marigolds and petunias are so much easier to stack in racks and transport. I can appreciate the logistics but if this is what plant selling has become about, a pile it high sell it quick approach, lacking in inspiration and imagination then it’s sad. I leave you with what must be the world’s smallest dahlia. Need I say any more.
A teeny tiny dahlia
wellywoman 
I agree with what you say about garden centres selling the same stock. To make matters worse, the two nearest garden centres to me are the same chain, but different names, so all their stock is exactly the same. We had a wonderful local nursery but unfortunately, it closed last year due to the owners retiring. They didn’t sell the business on, which is a shame. I’m still on the lookout for another local nursery which is as good.
Some places seem spoilt for choice with great nurseries and others not so. The garden centres around us are all independents but still they stock the same plants. Seems completely pointless to me in what is a competitive business. I would have thought it made more sense to be a bit distinctive.
Jumping up and down and cheering you on – I’ve just had exactly the same experience and here in Ireland we are even more limited in the number of wholesale nurseries supplying the garden centres. I did think I might get a few cosmos but a) the ones on offer were all dwarf and I wanted something to fill in and give a bit of height and B) they were €3.99 each. I know I should have sown them back in the spring but like you I had other things on and I don’t have that sort of money for a filler – what gardener does. I’m going out this minute to make delayed sowings of wallflowers and snapdragons for next year. And congratulations to my local council – Fingal – on the corn marigold, cornflower and poppies that are giving us bright roundabouts and centre strips when the rest of the world is burned to a crisp
Thanks Kathryn. It is frustrating that bedding plants are seen as the only option. Don’t see why cosmos and other brilliant hardy and half-hardy annuals can’t be grown and sold. I’ve grown taller ageratums this year which are gorgeous and infinitely better than the mutated miniatures I see in garden centres. I’m glad to hear you have an enlightened and informed council.
Oh I couldn’t agree more. So many things grown by the billion in greenhouses in The Netherlands, Channel Islands, popping up all over, homogenising the gardens of the nation.
It takes me forever to find suitable gap fillers, and more often than not I too resort to dahlias or salvias, even though my local area is replete with independent nurseries and plant specialists. The choice is dull and cheap or interesting and extortionately expensive.
Mail Order sucks and is a minefield of poor quality plants and misleading/inaccurate descriptions, if they even arrive alive that is.
I DO NOT WANT TO BE HOMOGENISED!
Thanks Nick. It’s good to hear I’m not alone in my thinking but sad at the same time that there are so many gardeners out there not being catered for. So much of modern life is about homogenisation. I’m just finishing a gardening book that’s out next year that hopefully will challenge a few ideas. Maybe if more of us ask for the plants we want to buy, things might start to change. 🙂
I couldn’t agree with you more, garden centres seem to cater more for those who love bedding plants and hanging baskets, which seems so out of date to me. Don’t even get me started on all the other strange tat they sell. There are a few small nurseries around that are much better, but at this time of year I’m always annoyed with myself for not sowing more annuals to fill those border gaps. Next year!
Hi Zoe. I think there’s a place for bedding. It isn’t to my taste but I know it is for others, I just wish, like you that there was some other choice. I do find it strange when plants like ammi and cosmos are so popular that the garden centres haven’t seen a potential market. I can never sow and grow enough annuals to satisfy my needs. 😉 Come on garden centres, step up!
No idea who’s buying an 8 inch Dahlia!
I’m preferring the planting schemes in the hedgerows this year than some of my local garden centres too! Are you going to tell us more about your book soon?!
I’d love to but still not allowed. I think I might burst soon. I’m not great at keeping secrets. 😉
Very well said Wellywoman, I agree with every word you say. Britain in Bloom could also favour some more naturalistic planting too I think. Hope you have a lovely weekend.
Thanks CJ and I so agree about Britain in Bloom. It would make such a difference for our wildlife too.
It’s exactly the same here in Australia. I would like to support local businesses, but they don’t have what I want, so I am relying more and more on online nurseries. I have a couple of favourites that always have interesting plants, and great service, but sadly that doesn’t solve the problem of wanting to grab a few annuals to quickly fill a few spaces. Having said that, I succumbed out of desperation to some “dwarf” Cosmos seedlings last summer, and they grew taller than me, so not really so dwarf. Not sure what happened, but I was delighted.
Hi Lyn. Seems like the gardening industry is missing a trick here. People with the inclination to spend but they don’t see what they want. Love the story about the ‘dwarf’ cosmos. Hope you didn’t plant them somewhere where their height was a problem. 😉
An interesting , and perceptive, post and comments. I agree with all you say and sympathise.
Nurseries have clearly suffered from the onslaught of the garden centres which do little to cater for the more discerning gardeners.
Sadly it’s an all too familiar story, and one that I can’t see changing for the better in the near future, if at all. xx
Thanks Flighty. I’m not a fan of garden centres, although I see a place for them. There are some good nurseries out there but others frustrate me. I don’t think they keep up to date with the market and what people want well enough and therefore find it increasingly hard to compete with garden centres. There is clearly a gap in the market for more interesting and affordable filler plants.
It is the same syndrome which dominates the food on offer at the supermarkets, large retailers selling bog standard stock to maximise profit by limiting choice.
I have been gardening long enough to remember the time pre-garden centres and certainly regret the decline of the independent nurseries.
The answer “to to grow your own” is sadly not an option open to everyone and even then you have to be prepared to hunt around to find the more interesting species and varieties to plant.
So vote with your purchasing power and make your voice heard.
I so agree and yet we are constantly told we’ve got more choice. Frustrating, isn’t it? I might start asking at my local independent garden centre if they could stock a wider variety. Worth asking at least.
Don’t ask, don’t get! Always worth a try.
Absolutely agree with all the above! I grow cut flowers from seed, lots of annuals and biennials along with the herbaceous/perennials from my borders. I grow enough from seed each year to sell off extras at our local Country Market here in Wadebridge, Cornwall. Country or Farmers markets are good places to look for locally grown plants at very reasonable prices-you can usually speak direct to the grower-and avoid the multi national garden centres. ps This is the first comment I have posted on this brilliant blog.
Thank you Patsy for leaving a comment. I really do appreciate it. It’s lovely to hear your thoughts. I’ve often said ‘If only I lived in Cornwall’, the area you’re in is my favourite spot. Now it sounds even better. If only I had someone like you near by. :)) I agree country fairs and plant fairs are great places for good value plants.
I’m fairly lucky here in NW Ireland as there are a few people very local to me growing amazing perennial plants at very good prices. One of them does’nt even have a tunnel so you know you’re not buying in soft plants that shrivel up at the slightest bit of cold or wet.
It sounds like you have some great growers near you. It’s a shame it so hit and miss. We’ve visited some great nurseries dotted about but I still think there are a lot that are quite mediocre.
You’re absolutely right, poor choice when it comes to gap fillers, annuals etc. A friend of mine, a nursery chap, once told me though that annuals/biennals are very hard to sell as most people feel they don’t get much for their money if it only lives for a such a short time. Also umbellifers are often considered weeds. If you have gaps just sow seeds in situ, very easy, no greenhouse needed.
Hi Annette. I can see why people might think that but you can get 3 or 4 months of flowers from many annuals, just as many as you would from some bedding plants which people seem happy to buy. I love the idea that umbellifers are thought of as weeds. They are so trendy at the moment and brilliant for insects. Maybe nurseries need to do more at educating their customers in these other plants.
I’ve tried the seed sowing direct but the neighbours’ cats defeat me by using these spaces for a toilet. I’ve tried putting down netting and prickly prunings on top but it looks so unsightly I’ve given up.
This is my first year of gardening, I have in the pass had the odd hanging basket and patio pot with the everyday bedding plant and that was good enough for me but this year I’ve done my garden up and have dug out some boarders as I wanted to take the next step in gardening but when I visited our local garden centres I realised there wasn’t much on offer other than the bedding plants that I had filled my pots and hanging baskets with in passed years.
So what to do, I’ve bought a few packs of seeds and hope to grow a few flowers myself but I am very short on space. I hope by next year I’ll find a little garden nursery tucked away somewhere that sells something a little different.
p.s I love your blog.
You’re very kind, Joanne. I can recommend flower plug plants as a good way to get started. Try to find companies that sell the slightly bigger plus rather than the seedlings and they’ll give you a good head start. If you post up the area you live in (you don’t have to be too specific) maybe others will be able to offer some plant nursery recommendations.
P.s Thank you, I’m glad you like the blog. :))
If you’re new to gardening and short on – and cash – you might want to try out some of the reliable annuals. Not the most exclusive of plants, perhaps, but… If you sow a packet of marigold seeds on half a square meter next spring you will have a densely planted patch of yellow flowers within a month or two, depending on the weather. Lavatera, sweet peas and nasturtiums are also easy to grow from seed and so common that you can normally find the seeds very cheaply in supermarkets or garden centres. (And these are flowers my mother let me grow in my own little part of her garden when I was a child, and I still grow them, partly for sentimental reasons and partly because they’re so easy and I rather like them.)
Just remember to sow the seeds more closely than recommended; they can handle that, and it will give you a flower bed, rather than some plants with bare soil between.
If you have a spare window shelf (inside) from February/March until the last risk of frost is gone, I can also recommend growing dahlias from seed. Dead-easy, and it will make an impact when you plant them out in late spring and a single seed packet can fill an entire flower bed. They will flower from around the end of June to the first frost if you keep nipping off the spent blooms… (And… Everybody seems to think it’s VERY impressive to grow dahlias from seed, but really it couldn’t be easier!)
Great tips. I love dahlias but haven’t grown them from seed. I often acquire some from friends who have sown too many though. Cats are my nemesis when it comes to direct sowing in the garden. Even if I cover the ground in netting or prickly branches they still manage to use the ground as a toilet, digging it up and disturbing the seeds. I’ve given up trying this way in the garden. 😦
When growing dahlias from seed you should grow them indoors – or in a greenhouse – until the last frost is gone and then you plant them out where you want them. (And with a decent mulch, some tubers might survive the winter if it’s not too cold and wet.)
By the time you plant them out they will be large enough to be left alone by cats, I assure you.
I saw a stunning border today, sown with mixed annuals from a supermarket chain on May 15th. Jammed tight with an absolute riot of colour. They won’t last long because they were sown so closely but if one resowed a different spot now – or even scattered more seed between them, there would be another explosion of colour in September. Beginning to wish I ‘d bought one of those big boxes of seeds myself
Such a tiny dahlia… Cute, but rather pointless, I think. The larger the dahlia, the better! I can’t buy potted dahlias, it seems; when I do, the slugs attack instantly and within days it’s all but gone, apart from a few dead stalks sticking out of the ground. The ones grown from seed or tubers seem much sturdier and thus less prone to slug attack.
Bedding plants are not my favourites; I’ve tried using some lobelia as groundcover under some of my roses, but a) the deer and slugs were all over them at first, setting them back several weeks by razing them to the ground and b) they’re just not spreading out as I’d hoped to, but remain isolated clumps of blue. To cover the ground under even a few roses I guess I should have bought dozens and dozens – and then some dozens – rather than the 6 I bought as a trial run, but that would end up too costly. Next year it will be wild strawberries, propagated from the runners around the Puddles; much more reliable and infinitely cheaper!
I love the idea of the wild strawberries underneath your roses. My mum spends a small fortune on transforming her garden every year with bedding plants. It’s expensive and hard work having to plant them all. I think it’s getting a bit much for her now but when I’ve suggested herbaceous perennials as an easier option she’s not interested.
I don’t think my grandmother – or my mother – ever considered bedding plants for their gardens, and I’m very much schooled by them, though they don’t know it… My grandmothers current garden – the small 700 m2 rather than the 5000 m2 garden plus 2000 m2 vegetable garden she used to have – was planned for initial high-maintenance but with plants that would tolerate an increasing amount of neglect as the gardeners grew older. She’s 90 now, and the only gardening done is a guy who comes to mow the lawn. And her garden still looks good, thanks to perennials and shrubs.
My Mum’s new garden is about 700 m2 as well, and she too has chosen loads of shrubs and perennials so the garden will age well with her. (And let’s face it; the garden of a holiday home should be about the same maintenance level as that of an elderly woman. Enough to keep one occupied and self-sufficient enough to endure months of neglect.)
Expensive bedding plants really have no place in either garden; my Mum and grandmother haven’t the time or energy for them, and I certainly don’t have the cash for them – and prefer putting my time an energy into more long-term projects.
I think that my face might be all “wizened and screwed up” too if I was unceremoniously shoved into one of those ‘orrible white polystyrene boxes. No wonder some of the plants are stunted. I think that you are hitting the nail on the head WW with your comment about the logistics of transporting taller and generally floppier plants en masse. It seems that if you want to have those sorts of plants the main option is to grow them yourself which is not feasible for everyone 😦 I have a feeling that change will be a long time a – coming if ever but hope that I’m wrong.
PS Dickens did cheerful too 🙂
It seems lie there’s quite a monopoly of seed companies and wholesale growers. The situation will only get worse if the EU have their way with controls over seeds and plant material. Sad really. It is doable though as I have seen a few more natural plants creeping through this year, just not enough. I do love Dickens. I loved the TV adaptation of Our Mutual friend they did about 14 years ago. I ended up borrowing the box set from the library and watching all of it in one go. I think it was about 6 hours long!
I am with you on this, my local garden centres are nothing more than plant supermarkets. The plants are often overpriced and neglected.as well as very uninspiring.
For inspiration I head to Petersham Nurseries in South West London. This is a beautiful nursery and although it is very expensive it does offer interesting plants, thoughtfully displayed, often in the most exquisite containers. Their website is worth a look.
Sarah Raven is equally inspirational and has an excellent mail order facility.
Happy shopping!
It;s the same problem buying perennials – the standard selection is offered at all garden centres. They have to be bought soon after delivery or they look worn out. It’s why I have resorted to buying plants online which is rosky as you can’t see what you are getting but at least this way I have a choice.
I bought two bare-rooted dahlias from my local g c and find that two dwarves have sneaked into my garden. Very annoying as there was no mention of small size. . We are lucky and have quite a few small excellent delicatessen type of nurseries round here. But for the really interesting annuals no-one seems to rival the seed houses. Gap in the market?
How annoying to have some dwarf plants creep in. I so agree there is a gap in the market. Any nurseries out there reading? It seems there are a fair few people who would like some more choice. 🙂
It has been really interesting seeing how this particular post struck such a huge chord with so many of your readers. It certainly sent me and a car load of gardening friends off to visit all the better garden centres within easy(ish) reach to see what we could find and keep them encouraged. But it also reminded me how depressing I found our national garden show – Bloom, in Dublin over the June bank holiday – where most of the designers had used that same “supermarket” palette. I’d have been even more annoyed if I had had to spend entrance money, instead of having a press pass
Hi Kathryn, I love the sound of gardening trip to boost morale. It is sad that the choice of plants for sale is driven by tradition in regards to bedding plants. We just can’t shake off the garden ideas of the seventies in terms of half-hardies and tender plants. But then on the other hand the show gardens so often seem to have got all their plants from the same place and what’s in fashion seems to be the driving force. It was really quite noticeable at Chelsea this year. The place you’d expect to see variety and it wasn’t really there. Shows and the show gardens do have the power to drive change. It would be nice if they took on this challenge and tried something different and didn’t seem to all work from the same palette.
I had to smile when you wrote of the ‘supermarketification’ of the garden centres because my rudbeckia, cosmos, coreopsis, etc have all come from the local supermarket! I’m also lucky in having access to unusual plants at the college nursery shop and an independent garden centre within a 10 minute walk from home, staffed by knowledgeable and helpful gardeners. They stock an excellent selection of unusual plants and have a tiny section that caters to the bedding plant enthusiast. The trade nurseries that I’ve visited also have an excellent selection although they tend to predominantly grow shrubs and trees that will reap a larger profit for them, naturally. But I take your point – it’s just wrong when you can buy a fair range of plants from the supermarket and have to suffer boring bedders from the garden centre giants. As ever, it’s all in the planning! 😉
It sounds like you’ve got some great plant buying places close-by. You’d think with the number of garden centres around us we would too. But none of them grow their own and all seem to buy in from the same wholesaler. They’re all independents though and some family-run which is what makes it all the more disappointing.
I have recently been thinking exactly the same thing, but in the case of annual vegetables.
The grow your own movement is fantastic but for those gardeners who don’t have the time to seek out and sow the veg plants that make growing your own the joy that it is, they are left with uninspiring boring vegetables which are cheaper to buy in the supermarket.
I am beginning to understand why there are so many overgrown and unloved plots at my allotment site.
I am, however working on a plan to rectify this, locally at least…