Blom Plants
If you want more people to enjoy the benefits of gardening, make it easier to garden.
New collection: Salvia Fløyel
Salvia Love and Wishes, Ravenswing and Gaura (not yet in flower).
New collection: Salvia Liv
Salvia Caradonna, White Umbellifer (Ravenswing pictured) and Gaura (not yet in flower)
Also available as part of our subscription A Year in Colour
New collection: Geranium Fjell
White Geraniums (sanguinium alba pictured) , White Umbellifer, and Gaura the Bride (not yet in flower)
‘The best gift this Easter not including chocolate’ by Blom
Seriously, don’t buy this instead of chocolate. Especially not for kids. That, my friends, is a mistake you only make once.
Whyacinths? Not sure there’s another flower that can do old fashioned and modern to quite the same extent. And good design typically requires a balance of both.
Bridal crown daffs given a new lease of life as cut flowers. Though I suspect the phrase ‘lease of life’ isn’t quite the one I’m after...
Normally I transfer them to a border where they can die down in peace ready to return next spring. But, having slightly overdone the bulb planting this year, I haven’t room.
Bridal crown daffs given a new lease of life as cut flowers. Though I suspect the phrase ‘lease of life’ isn’t quite the phrase I’m after...
Normally I transfer them to a border where they can die down in peace ready to return next spring. But having slightly overdone the bulb planting this year, I haven’t room.
Edited · 2m
Bridal crown daffs given a new lease of life as cut flowers. Though I suspect the phrase ‘lease of life’ isn’t quite the phrase I’m after.
Normally I transfer them to a border where they can die down in peace ready to return next spring. But having overdone the bulb planting this year, I haven’t room.
There are few things prettier in a garden than a simple pot of White Muscari. Especially Muscari Armeniacum 'Siberian Tiger', in my view the prettiest of them all.
Second pic: White Muscari, Sphagnum Moss and twigs of Silver Birch.
The main difficulty in creating this sort of thing is knowing what ‘all the bits are called’, knowing where you can get ‘all the bits’ and getting ‘all the bits’ in the sort of sizes that make this sort of thing possible. So, you may be pleased to discover we’re now selling ‘all the bits’ you need for perfect Spring and Easter displays like these.
Narcissus, Sphagnum Moss and twigs of Silver Birch.
The German word Kummerspeck literally translates as ‘grief bacon’ and refers to the weight you might gain due to emotional eating. The name Hellebore translates as ‘to injure if eaten’, which has a similar teutonic literalism but none of the playful charm. It’s a gorgeous plant that flowers till late March, needs very little tending and will bloom throughout the year's darkest days. Surely the Germans have a word for that…
(Image 2: APPEL)
Is there a lovelier harbinger of spring than the gentle nodding of snowdrops? No. No, there is not.
Skip to the part where you both love Gardeners' World…
KREM by Blom
Say it with Lenten Roses...
RØD by Blom
We have a few new collections this week, pinks, reds and creams and a few bundles (should all be up later today-ish)
If only there was some flower based tradition of giving about to take place...
Worth noting that though they are called winter collections, Hellebores flower well into April and some as late as May.
Call me eccentric but I think a bunch of flowers that lasts longer than a week might be a better symbol of your undying love. Though I suppose that does rather depend on the relationship.
Order a winter collection by 8th Feb for guaranteed delivery by the 14th. Or start dropping heavy hints and get someone else to buy one for you.
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Some plant bundles ready to go. I always find it strangely pleasing seeing them like this. Strange because it feels like the horticultural equivalent of saying I really like looking at fish when they’re not in water, but pleasing because I think it’s the moment you stop seeing them as individual plants and start seeing them as a garden, or at least part of one.
Hellebores are to my mind some of the most beautiful colours you will find in any garden at any time. The fact that they flower at a time of year when both flower and colour are in short supply makes them all the more remarkable.
When making a pot display, it’s important to strike the right balance between chaos and order. Too much chaos and the whole thing looks a mess, too much order and it all feels a bit unnatural.
I stage the plants in my chosen container before planting, moving them about until I find the right compositional balance. By which I mean, 'till I think it looks nice'.
If Farrow and Ball did plants they’d do Hellebores, but they’d have names like
Haunted Cloud and Melancholy Olives.
Painterly portraits by the brilliant,
One of the challenges I always found when trying to make my own container displays was that most nurseries sell most of their plants as 2-3 litre specimens. It’s far easier to create displays with good proportions if you have plants of differing sizes to begin with. It makes establishing a visual hierarchy far easier, and lets you pack more foliage into a pot than would otherwise be possible.
By design, gardens are not natural. Containers, doubly so. However, done well they possess a beauty that is at least a proxy for nature at its most effortlessly wonderful.
We started offering plants in collections because most people aren’t really trying to buy plants, they’re trying to make a garden. And buying plants one at a time probably makes doing that more difficult.
Can you gift Tulips for Christmas? Like so many simple gardening questions, the answer is a resounding ‘sort of’.
In my experience no one really gets back into the garden till January, though that may just be me and an almost spiritual commitment to the dormancy of winter. Still, it is perfectly okay to plant tulips as late as early January, but they may flower a little later and smaller for it.
The other option is to plant them into a pot now and gift them that way. Probably not one for hanging in stockings, but everyone likes flowers in spring, you just wouldn't think to ask for them for Christmas. I suspect what's required is someone of exceptionally good taste and a whimsical flair for gifting to lead the way...
And don’t worry if you’re not much of a gardener. If you can bury things in soil, you can grow tulips.
"From the joyful abundance of high summer to the stark beauty of deep winter, time and again gardens bring us face to face with the immutability of nature and its cyclical replenishment: birth, growth, death and rebirth. And it is in this steady invocation of days to come that we are gently reminded life goes on and that there is always hope, even as your tulip bulbs are being eaten by squirrels."
Belcombe Court in spring. Euphorbia, tulips and hellebores. A simple palette demonstrating both immaculate taste and timing. And proof, if any were needed, that bright and bold can do elegant.
photos by
Some words of encouragement:
Nurture the gardener. There are no gardens without gardeners.
Tulip La Belle Epoque has a unique colouring that any single picture will struggle to do justice. A quick search on insta will reveal 2 things: the extraordinary way their colour changes through the season, from coffee through to pinkish apricot, and just how uniquely beautiful they are.
Plant with Copper Image to give your garden a bit of golden age glamour next spring.
Available in 12s and 24s very large bulbs. Sold out on most sites.
Subtle antique shades of pale orange pink, gold and green give this tulip a copper-ish appearance and its name. And because of these subtle variations in colour and tone, it mixes brilliantly with almost everything, especially pinks and deep purples.
Now available in 12s and 24s