Category: flowers
The Chelsea Chop Explained
May 22, 2019
Mid to late May is the perfect time of year to treat your garden to a traditional Chelsea Chop, and the Dobies gardeners have been showing us how it’s done up at our Devon growing fields. The Chelsea Chop is a clever trick used by gardeners at around the same time as the RHS Chelsea Flower Show each year, which results in extended flowering periods for many perennials.
Carrying out the Chelsea Chop
The Chelsea Chop can be used on a wide range of perennials, and the closer to flowering you do your chop, the longer you’ll delay those blooms. Using shears or secateurs, chop back your perennial plant to up to a third. If you complete the Chelsea Chop on some of your garden’s perennials, you’ll delay their flowering period to begin as the first ones to bloom begin to finish – embracing successional flowering in your outside space.
If you have more than one clump of the same variety, why not chop back some and leave others to lengthen the plant’s overall flowering period? If you’re keen to extend the flowering season rather than to delay it, just cut half the front stems back and leave the rest.
Herbaceous perennials can be trimmed down by half as much with fantastic results. For one thing, your plants will look more compact, which means they’ll require less staking and you’ll enjoy lots of smaller, but equally beautiful, flowers.
Perfect your Chelsea Chop with 15% off Spear & Jackson’s Kew Gardens Collection. Click here to shop the range.
3 of the best perennials for your summer garden
June 15, 2018
If your diary’s starting to fill up with summer barbeques, it’s easy to add the finishing touch to your outside space before your friends start to arrive. No matter how long we wait for summer, it always seems to creep up on us– and you can add instant impact to your garden to get ready for those guests.
Continue Reading
Creating an easycare perennial border
April 13, 2018
With so much choice when it comes to perennial border plants, choosing the perfect products for your garden can be difficult. If you’ve yet to try splitting your birders into three sections (front, middle and back), it’s an effective and fun way to make choosing your perennials easy. Once you start thinking about your plants by section, it’s just a question of choosing the right sizes and the colours to fit your scheme.
Continue Reading
Growing Wallflowers
August 16, 2016
Wallflowers are both easy to grow and hardy. These cottage garden biennial favourites have deservedly graced our gardens for many years. Not only do the jewel colours brighten a dull day but the evening perfume is an added delight.
Plants for Coastal Gardens
February 17, 2015
We thought we’d share with you some excerpts from a Dobies of Devon article published in the February/March edition of the English Riviera magazine down here in sunny Torbay. The brief was to give some guidance as to what gardening jobs to do at the time of year and also what plants would be best suited to a coastal garden. So, although you may not live in Torbay the following may be useful, especially if you live on any stretch of the UK’s 17,820km coastline!