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  • Ferntastic Evergreen Ferns

    Ferntastic Evergreen Ferns
    Architectural, versatile, colourful, dainty are just a few words to sum up this popular group of plants.  They are surprisimgly useful in many a situation, from walls and steep banks to shady woodland stumpery environments or even pots, containers and hanging baskets.
    Below are a few of my favourite evergreen ferns pictured in this article.
    Evergreen ferns (planted in the top of the basket) including:
    Asplenium scolopendrium (hart’s tongue fern):  Native fern with glossy  leathery tongue like fronds.  Will grow anywhere, even in the cracks of walls.  Grows 50cm x 50cm.
    Asplenium scolopendrium:
     
    Cyrtomium fortunei:
     
    Cyrtomium fortunei (Japanese holly fern):  Add an oriental touch to the planting scheme with this vigorous fern which produces sword shaped lime green juvenile leaves.  Grows 60cm x 50cm.
    Polystichum setiferum ‘Congestum’ (congested soft shield fern):  This dwarf fern produces lacy soft fronds with a fine texture which will grow in virtually any shady location.  Grows 30cm x 30cm.
    Polystichum setiferum:
     
    To achieve this look you will need:
    • 1 x 35cm (14″) wire hanging basket
    • 1 x 35cm (14″) natural moss look basket liner
    • Ericaceous compost
    • Water storing crystals to add to compost in order to aid water retention
    • Small log for decorative effect
    • Evergreen ferns (planted in the side of the basket) including:
    • Polypodium vulgare (common polypody): Native fern for all soil types.  Comb like fronds with deeply cut leathery leaves often covered in orange spores.  Grows 30cm x 30cm.
    • Blechnum penna-marina (hard fern): Good ground cover fern. Produces elegant glossy dark green fronds and bronze new growth.  Height 15cm.

  • Trendy Shrubs

    Shrubs form the backbone and structure to our gardens, and can provide seasonal interest throughout the year.  Here we look at a few recently introduced or little known shrubs that we think will be a hit in 2016, and fit well with the current trend for relaxed naturalistic planting.
    Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum ‘Kilimanjaro Sunrise’
    Voted Chelsea Flower Show plant of the year 2015, this gorgeous Viburnum has it all.  Beautiful white flowers in Spring followed by red berries loved by the birds, then good autumnal foliage colour.  Never growing too large, it is ideal for smaller gardens.
    Clethra alnifolia ‘Hummingbird’
    This little known plant’s common name is Dwarf Summersweet which is a clue to its appeal.  The dainty white flowers appear in summer and have a beautiful spicy-sweet fragrance.  Hummingbird has a compact habit and as an added bonus will happily grow in a shady location.
    Exochorda racemosa ‘Magical Springtime’
    This introduction of the beautiful Pearl Bush is more compact and upright than its hugely popular cousin Exochorda ‘The Bride’.  Smothered in pure white flowers in Spring, it is fully hardy and very easy to grow.  Available in limited numbers so hurry!
    Cotinus coggygria ‘Lilla’
    Dwarf purple smoke tree.  This beautiful new shrub is a compact version of the highly popular Cotinus ‘Royal Purple’.  Growing to just over 1m, it has stunning wine red leaves that turn vibrant red/orange in Autumn.  In summer the fluffy flower panicles on mature plants appear to cloak the bush in a cloud of pink ‘smoke’.
    Sambucus nigra ‘Serenade’ 
     
    This attractive new form of ornamental elder has colourful bronze pinnate foliage and panicles of delicate white flowers.  Perfect for giving borders a soft naturalistic back-drop.
    Lavatera clementii ‘Silver Barnsely’
    Lavatera Barnsley has been popular for many years, but now a beautiful form with soft silver foliage and a profusion of blush white flowers has been developed, making this quick growing shrub the perfect addition to sunny borders.

  • Bold Bulbs for Colour Theming

    Bold Bulbs Colour Theming this Autumn for Spring
    It’s time to start thinking about planting spring bulbs to make sure you have some well needed spring colour in your garden after the winter.
    This bank holiday weekend (Friday 24th August – Monday 27th August 2018) get 20% OFF all spring bulbs.  Plant now to get the sprirt of spring in your Garden next year.
    Use our colour wheel below to get the theme you want…

  • Plant Profiles – Six of the best plants for the autumn garden

    Plant Profiles – Six of the best plants for the autumn garden
     
    Euonymus alatus Compactus
    This is a stand out plant of the autumn garden.  For several weeks in October this compact form of the Winged Spindle produces a blazing display of amazing pinkish red leaf colour, before the leaves drop revealing a fascinating structure of ‘winged’ branches.
    Abelia grandiflora Kaleidoscope
    This compact shrub will fit into any garden.  It has dainty blush white flowers in late summer and autumn that are lightly fragrant.  The glossy semi-evergreen leaves intensify in colour to firey orange-red as the year progresses.
    Ceratosigma willmottianum
    Hardy Plumbago is prized for its vivid lapis lazuli blue flowers produced in late summer and autumn.  An easy to grow garden plant, simply cut back hard in winter.
    Acer Osakazuki
    Regarded as the best Acer for autumn colour.  Green leaves in summer turn to blazing crimson on established plants.
    As with all Japanese Acers best autumn colours are achieved by planting in ericaceous compost.
    New Parrotia Persian Spire
    This fantastic new upright bush has spectacular autumn foliage and is great for adding structure and interest where height is required but space is limited.  Grows to about 75cm wide and 2m tall in 10 years.
    Callicarpa Profusion
    The Beauty Berry gets its common name for good reason.  It is studded with berries that resemble small iridescent purple pearls.  Best planted in pairs to allow cross pollination and a big display of berries.
     
    Why not visit our ‘Autumn Fire’ exhibition showing the best colour that autumn has to offer.  Open from Saturday 24th September – Sunday 30th October.

  • A Few of our Favourite Things (Autumn 2016)

    A few of our favourite things
    Coolings is full to bursting with wonderful plants and products.  Here, our staff pick a few personal favourites.
    Carol – Our Acer Expert
    At this time of year, I think Acer palmatum ‘Orange Dream’ is a perfect addition to any garden, especially if you’re looking to add some autumn interest.  Acer ‘Orange Dream’ is a beautiful golden yellow-orange spring growth, a limey-green for the summer, turning stunning orange gold in the autumn.  As it’s a slow growing deciduous Acer, it’s ideal for small gardens or a large container. It would look great in one of our lime green National Trust Pots (£39.99) with some Kelkay Green Slate (£5.99 a bag, buy 3 bags or more £5.49 each) around it.
     
    Reece – Our Roses Expert
    When it comes to roses, you can’t beat the colour yellow.  There are a few gems amongst our new season roses that I personally love:  English Beauty ‘The Poet’s Wife’ is a shrub rose bred by David Austin, and has an exceptional rich fruity fragrance – strong lemon tints at first, becoming sweeter and stronger with age.  Another golden wonder is Rosa ‘Arthur Bell’ which holds prize position in my garden.  I love that it flowers very early in the season, repeat flowers and has good disease resistance.  It also has a fragrance that is rarely matched by any other floribunda variety, but as the saying goes ‘roses for noses and noses for roses’!
    Helen – Our Shop Team
    Candles, candles and more candles! I particularly love our Root Legacy range. As well as the large choice of fragrance, I like that they are available in lots of different shapes and sizes.  At home I’m quite traditional and always stick with a vanilla scent like Root’s ‘French Vanilla’ (Votive £1.99), but if I’m giving one as a gift I can’t resist being a little more adventurous!  My favourite is Root’s Legacy ‘Lemon Frosted Scone’ (Tin £6.99) – it burns for up to 30 hours and smells good enough to eat!  If giving as a gift, I often choose a card from our Quayside range – gardening humour is guaranteed to make my green fingered friends smile!
    Kathy – Our Shop Team
    I’m a keen baker when I’m not working t Coolings so my eye is always drawn to our cookery range of books.
    My latest purchase was ‘500 Baking Recipes’ which is perfect for novices or experienced bakers and was great value at only £4.99 – with that many new recipes I might even give Arthurs a run for their money!  I’m also a sucker for the Fallen Fruits shopping bags (£2.99).  There is an assortment of designs, of which I already have the Farm print range, and the Nature print range will definitely be on my Christmas list!
    Garry – Our Shrub Expert
    Autumn has always been the best time for planting.  It’s only since plants have been containerised that people prefer to plant in the spring sunshine.  In the autumn the soil is still warm, the nights are cooler, the rain and dewy mornings all combine to get plants rooting before the winter sets in. Once the spring arrives, the plants get off to a flying start.  Some of my favourite larger specimens to plant nor are Ilex, Euonymus alatus, Magnolia, Viburnum, Prunus lusitanica and Thuja plicata ‘Atrovirens’ benefit the most from this early establishment, helping them to grow strongly during the next summer.

  • For the love of dogs

    Recently my family and I rescued a beautiful dog we named Lily.
    I’m pretty sure she’s a Lurcher crossed with a magician, mainly because she has a habit of escaping, but also because she’s magical.  We found her at Viking Oaks, a rescue centre in Wrotham.  They had found her wandering the streets of Tunbridge Wells, emaciated and mangy.  After two months of love, feeding and mange treatment, she was well enough to be re-homed; and we were lucky enough to give her that home.  As Lurchers tend to have sensitive stomachs we took the advice of the rescue centre and kept her on dry food (Lily’s Kithcen, 2.5kg, £16.49, and the name is definitely just a coincidence) because it’s grain free.
    In the evening we mix in a little bit of raw meat with it (Natures Menu Frozen Dog Food, 95p) and some oil for her skin.
    The day before we picked her up, we bought a load of dog things in preparation, like a bed, food, all the toys, lead, harness etc.  She promptly chewed through her lead, and then her harness.  First lesson, buy a sturdy lead.  We ended up getting two new leads, a rope and an extendable one (Flexi 8m cord, £22.99)  and she’s loved it ever since.  Thankfully, the bed is washable because one of Lily’s new found joys in life is rolling in fox poo.
    Lily is pretty food (specifically treats) orientated, so we managedto teach her to sit and lie down on command fairly quickly.  She’ll eat any treat going, but she loves the beef and cheese Fusions and chicken necks (Anco, from £1.99), which are great if you can stand the smell.  She also likes to chew on shoes, mobile phones, tables, sunglasses and rugs.  these items aren’t paricularly good for dogs, not all that nutricious, so we have attemped to replace said items with chews, such as a rawhide bone (FarmFood Impressed Medium, £2,49) and a chewy green bone that has a flavour (Petface Easy Up Bone with Hide Flavour, £4.99).  She likes the rawhide, but the toy bone wasn’t paricularly popluar.  Unfortunately, toys in general don’t seem all that popular with her, she doesn’t seem to know what to do with them.
    We’re getting there though, just the other day she chased a stick and some butterflies.

  • A Rising Star….

    Do you want a climber that has everything going for it?  Beautiful glossy evergreen foliage that turns a glorious ruby red in winter?  Vigorous but not rampant growth that will cover a fence but not swamp your garden?  Best of all, a glorious and sweetly-scented white flower that will fill the summer evenings with its heady scent? If the answer is yes, then look no further than Star Jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides).

    (Star Jasmine)

    Star Jasmine is one of our most popular climbers but there are still plenty of people out there who have not discovered its charms.  Ideal for a sunny location, it will thrive in most soils except shallow chalk.  It can also be easily grown in a large pot.  An annual feed in the spring with Vitax Q4 slow release fertilizer is all that is needed to keep plants in full vigour.  We sell plants on 80cm canes through to 2m tall specimens, and can even supply ready grown arches which are truly spectacular when in full bloom!

    For customers who are already familiar with Trachelospermum jasminoides we also offer in limited numbers a variegated form.  Another lovely evergreen species we have is Trachelospermum asiaticum which is similar but has a highly fragrant butterscotch yellow star-shaped flower.

    Trachleospermum asiaticum

    So if you want one climber that does it all, Star Jasmine is indeed a true star!

  • Unexpected news about Brian the Goat

    Those familiar with the story of Brian the Goat will be aware that he was in search of a companion to spend his time with on our Nature Trail at Coolings Green & Pleasant. It is with sadness that we report his time with us has been cut a lot shorter than we all had hoped.

    Brian the Goat was suddenly taken ill on Monday with suspected renal failure. He was transferred to the Royal Veterinary College Clinic for treatment, but sadly he died on Wednesday night. An autopsy will hopefully provide more information but in the meantime we are all very shocked and saddened by this most unexpected loss.

  • Fertiliser – the facts!

    The BBQ season is well underway.  The whiff of charred sausages is hanging in the summer haze and men across Britain have claimed their place at the BBQ grill to begin their Bear Grylls pretensions!  I’ve already indulged in one too many burgers and a glass of Pimms (or two!).

    However, it’s not just us that enjoy extra fuel during the summer months – plants need their own summer feast too!  Plants are able to make their own food by capturing the energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar.  But in order to stay healthy and give the best results, they take additional nutrients out of the soil or compost, so it’s important to provide them with supplementary fertiliser.  The basic nutrients required by plants are nitrogen (N) for leaf and stem growth, phosphorus (P) for root growth and potassium (K) for flowers, fruit and to maintain healthy growth.

    Fertilisers are concentrated sources of plant nutrients, usually in compact form such as pellets, granules, powders or liquids.  They are used to improve plant growth and yields.

    Here are our suggestions:

    Good ‘All Rounders’:

    Miracle-Gro All Purpose Plant Food
    The number one selling plant food that helps plants grow twice as big (versus unfed plants).  It has all the basic nutrients required by plants to help grow bigger, lusher plants with noticeably more blooms.  It’s a great ‘all rounder’ for bedding, shrubs and roses.  Feed every two weeks from March to September for stunning displays. Miracle Gro feed is available in different forms, the quickest to nourish your plants is Miracle-Gro water soluble).

    Vitax Q4
    Vitax Q4 is another well balanced fertiliser and is best applied after pruning to encourage healthy growth and flowers.  It’s a pelleted fertiliser that produces excellent results on fruit, vegetables, roses and shrubs.  Similar to Miracle-Gro, it contains all the vital plant foods and trace elements essential for vigorous growth, abundant flowering and ripening of fruit: Apply throughout the growing season.

    Ideal for Bedding:
    As an alternative to ‘Miracle-Gro All Purpose Plant Food’, we also recommend:

    Scotts Osmocote Tablets
    A ‘slow release’ fertiliser – particularly good for bedding plants and other greenhouse crops.  The tablets are pushed straight into the compost and are ideal for use in tubs, containers and hanging baskets.  The controlled release of the nutrients means that they are not removed from the soil when watered.  The tablets contain extra trace elements to that container grown plants never run short of vital elements for healthy growth.   The controlled release action feeds plants for up to 6 months.

    Perfect for Roses:
    Roses are heavy feeders and thrive best in rich, fertile soil.  They will benefit from specific nutrients to help their growth to enable them to produce flowers.  We recommend:

    Bayer Garden Toprose
    Britain’s best-selling granular rose feed which boasts the perfect balance of nutrients for bright and beautiful roses and shrubs.  It also contains long-lasting nitrogen for balanced growth and Iron and Magnesium to guard against premature leaf drop.  We would suggest using in Spring after the roses have been trimmed back and then again when they have had their first flush of flowers.

    David Austin Rose Food
    This organic based rose food is specially formulated to release nutrients over a long period and as with the Toprose it contains essential trace elements to promote strong healthy growth and fine blooms.

    All products mentioned are available in our store.

    Happy feasting!

  • A Few of our Favourite Things (Summer 2016)

    Coolings is full to bursting with wonderful plants and products.  Here, our staff pick a few personal favourites.

    Sandra – Our Shop Team

    Graham Maxwell Bird Table Base with Grill (£75.99).  Beautifully handcrafted, well made table.  I would not be without my Jacobi Jayne Ring Pull Easy Clean Seed Feeder (£18.99).  The superb ring pull design allows the feeder to be effortlessly cleaned to ensure wild birds feeding from it stay healthy.

    Nicky – Our Marketing Team

    I Love the new Divine Deli Range, the golden grain is just beautiful.  The rustic bowls, snack dishes, coasters and serving boards would look great at a summer BBQ alongside the Signature Lemons range of hand painted Spanish ceramics.  The colours are so vibrant and perfect for summer dining.

    Lesley – Our Education and External Affairs Team

    As our resident cat lover I adore the Lily’s Kitchen cat food range.  All organic, natural ingredients and holistic recipes – my cat loves them! I’m also impressed with the range of Petface cat scratch posts (from £9.99).  Mine certainly keeps my cat alert and healthy.

     

    Sam – Our Herbaceous Expert

    Veronica gentianoides, one of my garden favourites.  Offering subtle pale blue flowers throughout the summer months and standing around 45-50cm, they are relatively pest free.  Apart from looking stunning, they are highly attractive to our pollinating insects…the bees and butterflies will thank you for it.  To plant them I’d be lost without my Kent & Stowe transplanting trowel.

    Geum Koi has vibrant and lively orange flowers that will brighten up any border or planter.  These clump forming, semi-evergreen plants truly do make you smile.  Flowering from early spring to summer, you won’t regret adding these to your gardens.

    Lyn – Our Climbers Expert

    The beautiful Jasmine ‘Clotted Cream’ always gets my vote for its heavenly scented crisp cream flowers.  I also have a soft spot for Passion flowers, their exotic looking flowers transport me to a summer oasis.

     

    Annie – Our Bedding Plants Team

    Geraniums are always top of my list, beautiful, long flowering and are good in the heat, so I don’t have to worry about watering them excessively.  they always look great in my garden when planted alongside white Bacopa.