Category: Blog

Winter Flowering Plants

It is often tempting to think that nothing flowers in the winter and that all in the garden is quiet and dead, however there are some plants that flower in the winter true they are not the big show off type blooms that grace our gardens in the spring and summer but still worthwhile.

There has always been a certain amount of bedding plants that will give a bright splash of colour and even a few foliage plants that add a certain amount of charm in the colour department. These are all well and good but tend to look a little false and maybe a touch garish.

Some of the winter flowering shrubs seem to be more elegant altogether more pleasing in their form, the colours are more calm and somehow more welcome during those bleak mid winter days.

I can think of few sights as pleasing as the graceful yellow flower that are produced by Mahonia Charity

This wonderful shrub will keep its flowers in the most harsh conditions.

Along with the Mahonia is the Skimmia with its rich dark green leaves and clusters of white flowers or berries it is truly a winter star. Neat and compact and easy to grow this shrub will brighten even the darkest winter day.

Why not have a winter flowering hedge for this you can employ Viburnum Tinus and be rewarded with a multitude of white flowers, on their own the flowers are small but they burn in clusters and look fantastic.

If it is a tree that you are after then the winter flowering cherry is a must, just like the other flowering cherries it will delight with its cheerful pink/white flowers. As this tree grows the coverage of flowers will become more.

Winter is not a dead period, with a little thought you can also use the photina as a foliage plant to give even more colour to your garden. Go for a walk to your local park and you will find a roit of colour and texture that shows its true value while winter does its worst.

For many years Bonsai plants have been cultivated by Japanese and Chinese people to bring harmony and nature to the home. Recently this trend started in the western part of the world and it is very popular in Europe.

Tips to care Bonsai Plants:

Bonsai plants need humidity and when it has been planted inside the atmosphere is often too dry. To create an ideal condition, mist the foliage daily and keep the tree standing on a humidity tray. the tray should be filled with gravel which is kept moist, the bonsai pot should not be standing on water. Do not keep the bonsai plant near any heat producing source as it will just make it dry.

Check the bonsai plant daily and water it, as soon as the soil starts to become dry.

Fertilize the plants every 7-10 days during the growing period (April to October), do not feed a tree in flower. If you have re-potted the bonsai plant wait for 4-5 weeks before adding fertilizers.

Maintaining the bonsai plant can be carried out in two ways:

Leaf-Pruning: Use bonsai pruning scissors or leaf.

Bamboo is one of our most popular ranges. Although not indigenous to the UK, it is a truly cherished plant all over the world. Originating in tropical and cold, mountainous regions; bamboo is highly prized as a malleable and flexible material. It is used in scaffolding, musical instruments, paper manufacture, as a building frame for houses and even serves a culinary use in Asia.

Care

Although bamboo is a hardy, resilient and low maintenance grass, by following these simple steps you can ensure that it flourishes and grows to impressive heights.

Water twice a week at first, and twice a week after

Add a bit of mulch into the soil to stabilise the soil temperature

Fertilise using a high nitrogen fertiliser in the spring and summer, a low one in the autumn and none at all in the winter

If you notice the leaves are curling up, water immediately

Varieties

There is a variety of bamboo to suit everyones palate, from the short dwarf bamboo to the broadleaf and longleaf. There is also a wide variety of colours among bamboo plants, with different shades of green, purple hues and the black stem of the Black Bamboo.

Neglectful Gardener?

Requiring minimal care and possessing one of the fastest growth factors of any plant in the world, bamboo is a safe option for the unadventurous gardener. Take a look at our range here.??

Garden Plants Online are now able to offer a full range of irrigation solutions that are able to

cater for the small patio garden to the larger mature garden. All the equipment that we have listed

in the Irrigation section is designed to be simple to use and effective in its use. Garden Plants Online are able to draw on extensive knowledge of irrigation and also of the Claber brand this in turn.

enables us to fully understand your needs. To offer the complete service and peace of mind we

are able to determine the correct amount of fittings and equipment you need for your project

all we need to know is the area or length and width of the boarders you wish to irrigate. To plan

your project with the least amount of trouble please contact us.

The basic fact is that plants in the garden are a creative landscape and due to the fact that new

plants often get added, plants need to get established and a steady supply of water delivered to the

base and root zone of the plant is the best method to ensure healthy and even growth .

Drip Irrigation offers an effective and cost efficient water delivery method to ensure that not one

drop of water is wasted. If you consider that only 1% of the worlds’ water is usable for everyday use

then it becomes even more clear that we must use this resource in an effective way.

Water companies are now seeing that drip irrigation is so much more effective than the traditional

point and spurt of the hose pipe and indeed are starting to remove timed drip irrigation from hose

pipe bans.

The other major saving will be noted in the lower cost of your water bills.

Effective but basic

The most basic yet effective product we supply is known as seep hose. This is a porous hose that

is simple to connect and can lay on top of the soil or be laid in a trench when planting a hedge for

example. Seep hose comes in 15m and 25m lengths . Easy to use and cost effective, for even more

control you can add a Claber water timer.

Outdoor lighting is a fantastic way to bring your garden to life when the sun goes down, if used with a little thought it really can bring plants and features to life after dark.

With low voltage lighting your choice is as vast as you can imagine and without the danger of high voltage cables, or the rather poor display that solar lights produce.

When choosing your lights give a thought to what it is you want to achieve, for example uplighting plants or do you want to light pathways.

When uplighting plants it is always better to go for the spot lights that have a halogen bulb fitted as this will produce the strongest light thereby giving the most dramatic effect. Trees for example can look fantastic if they are up lighted, with some thought it is possible to place the light in the crown of the tree to produce a good effect.

Pathways can be highlighted with the use of bollard type lights that use LED bulbs and decking can be transformed with the use of the small led lights that can be sunk into the wood work.

It is vital that you choose the correct transformer for your lights and the amount of lights you have.

the way to do this is to add up the total wattage of all your lights then choose the transformer that meets that requirement i.e. 80 watts of output would require a 100 watt transformer.

It is worth knowing that the 100 transformer has two out put connections so it is possible to run two cables in different directions.

Garden Plants Online are always happy to guide you through so that you can have a system that best suits your needs.

Halogen — these will tend to have 20W bulbs and therefore you will have less per transformer,

the following are halogen a transformer can only support the total of all the lights wattage

added up ie 5 x 20 watt bulbs = 100 W therefore you need a 100Watt transformer – the following

are halogen lights

• Melbourne
• Luxform uplighter
• Brisbane
• Rock light

It is also always better to advise the thicker SPT 3 cable with halogen along with the cable

connectors that have a wider slot for the thick cable ie SPT -3 > SPT-1 these com in pack of two and

are priced at 2.99

LEDS

The rest of the lights are led and as such are between 1.5W and 5W the same is true with regard

to selecting the correct transformer, add up the wattage of each light and you will then arrive

at the transformer needed. It would alway be better to allow a larger transformer thus allowing

customer to add more lights.

The cable with the lcd lights is SPT 1 with no need for different connectors as these are all

included in the box.

A point to remember is that after a run of 30m power will drop off.

Also keep in mind that a 100W transformer has two output sockets thereby allowing two main

cables to go of in different directions.

Gardening jobs for May

It is now starting to warm up and the sap is beginning to rise and the garden is coming to life after an overlong winter. So lets get out there and do some gardening . Here at Garden Plants Online we have a good list of things for you to do

Its time to knock some of those shrubs in to order, if your forsythia has finished flowering you can prune this back to the shape and size you want it. You may also prune back Buddleia ( this can be cut back by a third ) also the cornus may also be pruned back. With cornus the harder they are pruned the better the stem colour next winter

Now the soil has started to warm up you can plant a host of plants ( and at www.gardenplantsonline.co.uk we have a host of plants to delight you ) including sweet peas dahlias and all shrubs.

The worst thing about this time of the year is that the weeds start growing, so if you get on top of them as they rear their ugly little heads then you will win the battle. You could to help keep down the weeds and keep in the moisture mulch your beds ( depth of mulch should be 2 )

A general clean up of all your plants, cut out the dead wood and take off the dead leaves, if you have any rose bushes prune them back and make sure they are firm. Also you can sow half hardy bedding plants.

Have a look at your lawn, and if needed give it a cut but not to low and tidy up the edges, ifYour feeling keen give it a good going over with a lawn rake.

Garden Plants Online are now able to offer a full range of irrigation solutions that are able to cater for the small patio garden to the larger mature garden. All the equipment that we have listed on Irrigation section is designed to be simple to use and effective in its use. Garden Plants on line are able to draw on extensive knowledge of irrigation and also of the Claber brand this in turn enables us to fully understand your needs. To offer the complete service and peace of mind we are able to determine the correct amount of fittings and equipment you need for your project all we need to know is the area or length and width of the boarders you wish to irrigate. To plan your project with the least amount of trouble please contact us at info@plantsandtreesonline.

Why use irrigation

The basic fact is that plants in the garden are a created landscape and due to the fact that new plants often get added, plants need to get established and a steady supply of water delivered to the base and root zone of the plant is the best method to ensure healthy and even growth .

Drip Irrigation offers an effective and cost efficient water delivery method to ensure that not one drop of water is wasted. If you consider that only 1% of the worlds’ water is usable for everyday use then it becomes even more clear that we must use this resource in an effective way.

Water companies are now seeing that drip irrigation is so much more effective than the traditional point and spurt of the hose pipe and indeed are starting to remove timed drip irrigation from hose pipe bans.

The other major saving will be noted in the lower cost of your water bills.

Effective but basic

The most basic yet effective product we supply is known as seep hose. This is a porous hose that is simple to connect and can lay on top of the soil or be laid in a trench when planting a hedge for example. Seep hose comes in 15m and 25m lengths . Easy to use and cost effective, for even more control you can add a Claber water timer.

Cypress Tree: Bring the Oldest Living Tree to your Garden

The elegant cypress tree dates back thousands of years, and is known to be one of the oldest living trees on earth! There are around 24 varieties of the evergreen Cypress, such as the Italian Cypress or Mediterranean Cypress, Monterey cypress goldcrest, Blue Arizona cypress and Castlewelland Gold cypress, to name a few. Whether they take the form of shrubs or trees, they are majestic, hardy and require little maintenance.

Here are a couple of celebrity cypress trees that have fascinated the world for hundreds of years!

• Arbol del Tule – This towering Tree of Life stands with its head held high, in the town centre of Santa Maria del Tule in Mexico. Its trunk is the stoutest in the world, and the tree itself is believed to be around 1400 years old!

• The Lone Cypress One of the most famous trees in the world, this particular Monterey Cypress in California needs no introduction! In comparison with the Arbol del Tule, this tree is a youngster, barely 250 years old but is perhaps one of the most photographed trees!

   

Cupressus symbolizes longevity! So if you want to bring this gorgeous plant or tree into your garden, do check out our range of cypress trees and place your order hassle-free online.