With summer coming to a close, September marks the changing of the seasons. This month we’re celebrating movement in the Feel Good Garden.
Category: Grow Your Own
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Jon’s Top Picks for Autumn Colour
Ensure your garden or outside space stays colourful this season with Jon’s top plant picks below. Shop all plants in-store and online. Please note, in-store availability may vary between stores.
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Nature’s time to plant
Autumn is the perfect time to plant! The soil is still warm which allows roots to grow ready to support healthy top growth in the spring. Now is the ideal time to renovate borders or create spaces for additional planting. Here are some reliable choices to pop into newly created spaces for year-round interest.
Build your all season planter…
Autumn is a great time to create hardy planters that will provide a full year of interest. We have a great range of over 40 hardy evergreen patio and container plants in 11cm pots ideal to create lasting impact through the seasons. Here is a planter we created last autumn and photographed in the spring to inspire you to try yourself.
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August Feel Good Gardens
August is here! From hedgehogs to lady birds, we have designed this month’s garden to encourage new visitors into your outdoor space. Get even closer to our local wildlife by making your back garden a safe haven for nature. Scroll down to find out nine things you can do in your garden to help insects, birds and animals.
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July Feel Good Gardens
Get your garden ready for a month full of summer celebrations as we add some bright colours to our well-being gardens.
Whether you are hosting a garden party or celebrating from the comfort of your own patio or balcony, we have the perfect additions to add a pop of colour to your borders.
This beautiful array of colourful plants have all been handpicked by our Horticultural Manager Jon, to help you create the ‘Colour’ look in your garden at home! A stunning mix of herbaceous perennials and shrubs that add instant colour to your beddings at home!
In the growhouse this month we have our star products that will help you grow your colourful plants for the best bloom. All of these items are available to purchase in-store and online. Hand selected by our Head of Retail to give you the best results at home.
Complete your ‘Colour’ look with these accessories that bring it all together while adding to theme! Garden accessories make a huge difference to your outdoor living area. Bringing your indoor’s outdoors not only extends your living room but also adds little extra touch of home to your garden! Perfect for celebrating! All these products can be purchased online and in-store.
We hope you have a fabulous month full of garden parties and celebrating! If our Feel Good Garden has inspired you to recreate your own Colourful well-being garden at home, be sure to upload a photo and tag us on social media! @CoolingsGardenCentre #CoolingsGC. We love to see your tags!
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Coolings Feel Good Gardens – June
This month we are celebrating everything ‘Beautifully British’! In line with getting ready for the Queen’s Jubilee, our theme for this month’s well-being garden is…
Get your garden ready for a month full of patriotic celebrations as we celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
Whether you are hosting a garden party or celebrating from the comfort of your own patio or balcony, we have the perfect additions that not only add a touch of patriotism, but those that also add a beautiful aroma to your outdoor space. Our Feel Good Gardens can be found at all 4 of our sites. Find your local Coolings here.
‘Scent & Celebration’ checklist
This beautiful array of red, white and blue plants have all been handpicked by our Horticultural Manager Jon, to help you create the ‘Scent & Celebration’ look in your garden at home! A stunning mix of herbaceous perennials that add instant colour to your patriotic beddings!
In the growhouse this month we have our star products that will help you grow your Scent & Celebration plants for the best bloom. All of these items are available to purchase in-store and online. Hand selected by our Head of Retail to give you the best results at home.
Complete your ‘Scent & Celebration’ look with these accessories that bring it all together while adding to theme! Garden accessories make a huge difference to your outdoor living area. Bringing your indoor’s outdoors not only extends your living room but also adds little extra touch of home to your garden! Perfect for celebrating! All these products can be purchased online and in-store.
Watch our walk through!
Join Bobby & Jon for a walk through of this month’s Feel Good Garden.
Bobby shows us his favourite shop products while Jon talks us through his plant selection process so you can continue the celebrations in your garden at home.
We hope you have a fabulous month full of garden parties and celebrating! If our Feel Good Garden has inspired you to recreate your own ‘Scent & Celebration’ well-being garden at home, be sure to upload a photo and tag us on social media! @CoolingsGardenCentre #CoolingsGC. We love to see your tags!
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Grow your own: Tomatoes
Here are our four best ideas for how to grow tomatoes
- In hanging baskets and window boxes.
Trailing varieties such as ‘Tumbler’ can be grown in hanging baskets. These sweet cherry tomatoes will thrive if fed and watered regularly.
- On the patio in pots or containers.
Tomatoes grow well on a patio or sheltered balcony and can produce a steady crop. ‘Gardeners Delight’ will create a great crop if planted in a larger pot. Smaller varieties such as ‘Red Alert’ and ‘Red Profusion’ also flourish in pots.
- Outside in the ground.
Sometimes the traditional approaches to gardening can be the best! Tomatoes planted in the ground will need canes to support them. Ideally, plant somewhere that has not had tomato plants before as this can damage their chances. Tomatoes are cold sensitive, so ensure frosts have passed before planting out.
- In a growbag.
Tomatoes are shallow rooted plant so have no problems with growing in a growbag! A variety such as ‘Shirley’ is a good choice and will need a little help with canes or string to support its growth. We recommend using a Levington Tomorite Peat Free Planter.
We would recommend feeding your tomato plants with a food such as Levington Tomorite or Bronte Organic Tomato Plant Food. When the tomato fruit is ripe and fully coloured then it is ready for you to pick and enjoy!
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5 Easy Vegetable Plants to Grow
There is no better satisfaction than growing, harvesting and eating your own vegetables, and you don’t need a green thumb to be successful at it. Apart from being super fresh, they also taste much better. To get started, all you need is a couple of pots or a patch of soil and you can make a contribution to your family’s five-a-day portions of fruit and vegetables.
Whether you’re a gardening novice or just want to start a vegetable garden with the least amount of time and effort, here are some of the most popular (and easiest) vegetables to grow for a delicious supply of fresh produce.
Courgettes
Courgettes, or Zucchini as it’s known in other parts of the world, can be planted in May after the late frosts. Some varieties are perfect for patio containers – keep them well watered and pick the fruit regularly. For a fantastic summer crop try Courgette F1. The flowers can also be eaten and taste great when stuffed and fried.
Tomatoes
Supermarket tomatoes are expensive and are often tasteless. However, they are very easy to grow at home. We sell lots of varieties of tomatoes at Coolings that produce reliable, heavy crops with lots of flavour which you wouldn’t find from a Supermarket tomato!
Beetroot
For an easy to grow root vegetable try beetroot. Often used in salads but are also delicious when cooked or pickled. Their leaves can also be cooked and enjoyed in the same way as spinach. Beetroot can be sown directly into the ground from March to July. As they grow, thin the seedlings to about 5cm apart. You can look forward to harvesting your own colourful beetroot from May to September. Our favourites are Beetroot ‘Darko’ and ‘Golden’.
Chilli PeppersHow about being adventurous and growing your own hot chilli peppers this year? They grow very well in containers on a window sill or outside in a sunny position and one plant will often give you a hundred chillies or more, brightening up your space as well as your meals!
Simple Salad Leaves
Lettuce grows very quickly, is easy to harvest (harvest while plants are mature or pick leaves as needed), and takes up very little space. They can even be grown in containers, perhaps accompanied by flowers. Crunchy fresh leaves with a fantastic range of textures and flavours. Try growing some of our ‘cut and come again’ salad leaves such as ‘Baby Leaf Mix’ throughout the summer months, and you’ll be cutting fresh leaves for your sandwiches and salads just 3 weeks later! Better still, they will continue growing so you can harvest them again and again. -
Coolings Feel Good Gardens – May
There is nothing quite as satisfying as growing your own – imagine the joy of tucking into your first roast dinner with home grown fluffy roast potatoes!
Chard ‘Rainbow’
This wonderful vegetable is rich in nutrients making it the perfect addition to your diet. This Chard requires full sun / part shade and is perfect for cut and come again use!
Sweet Pea – Spencer Mixed
The glorioulsy sweet scented Sweet Pea flowers throughout the Summer. They are fantastic blooms for picking and enjoying fragrance infoors. Super easy to grow up a support.
Artichoke Cynara Scolymus
The Globe Artichoke is a magnificent statuesque plant that will return year after year and produce delicious large thistle-like flowers that can be boiled and eaten as a gourmet treat once the fluffy “choke” in the flower centre has been removed.
Apple Malus domestica ‘Ballerina Flamenco’
This Apple Tree is very reliable with a columnar habit. The dark red, crisp fruit are suitable for eating or cooking. Ballerina Flamenco grows in most soils and in sun or part shade making
them very easy to grow!
Shop the May theme look in-store or online:
Sweet Pea Spencer Mixed (9cm Pot)
Chard ‘Rainbow’ Mixed Multi-Pack
Blackcurrant Ribes ‘Black ‘n’ Red’ 3L
Chard ‘Rainbow’ Mixed Multi-Pack
Ballerina Apple Flamenco
Smart Veggies-Onion, Radish, Lettuce Stk
Smart 14 Kikuyu Faux Rattan Cone
Miracle-Gro Performance Organics Fruit & Veg Food Granular 1kg
Elho Green Basics Stack & Grow Large Living Black
Levington Tomorite Peat Free Planter
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Allotment Gardening – the benefits of growing your own
Benefits of owning an Allotment?
Well, where to start? As we have found out recently with the opening of our Plot to Plate greenhouse, growing your own is a very rewarding hobby. It is so satisfying seeing and tasting the fruits of your labour served on a plate. Allotments allow us to grow fresh, organic crops that suit our own tastes, such as fruit and veg which alternatively may be expensive to buy in the supermarket. You will also escape all those pesticide residues. On top of all that, you’ll get plenty of healthy exercise without paying for a gym membership and you’ll enjoy the camaraderie with friends on your plot, which will quickly grow into a friendly and welcoming community of gardeners to socialise amongst.The recent promise from the National Trust to create 1,000 new allotments may tempt you to take up a plot. In which case you may need to look further into the pleasures and pitfalls of allotment gardening. However, if you are more ‘Gro-bag’ than ‘Good life’ then fear not, every little counts!
Happy Growing!
P.S. Don’t forget, we are always willing to pass on our knowledge here at Coolings. Want to know more about gardening but don’t know where to start? Why not try our ‘How to be a Successful Gardener’ course? Whether it’s the basics of gardening you want to learn about (preparing soil, how to plant up, how to prune, growing in containers, composting and making it all look good etc), how to grow your own vegetables or learning more about wildlife in the garden, this course can help you. It’s split into two (15 week) modules so you can do both or just the one you are most interested in. No prior knowledge or experience is required just a practical, hands on course for people who have an interest in gardening or who are just starting out and want to learn the principles of modern day gardening. 3 hours a week
(If you haven’t visited our Plot to Plate Greenhouse yet, make sure you pay it a visit next time you are in store.)