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10 essential plants to buy now from your local garden centre

best plants to buy now garden centres -  Mint Images
best plants to buy now garden centres - Mint Images

Like many others during lockdown, for me, gardening has been a mental salve. From sowing seeds and lavishing them with utter devotion to buying plug plants online and putting in phone orders with my local garden centre, who have heroically still been delivering, it has been a powerful tonic.

Plantswoman Kitten Grayson agrees: “Getting your hands in the soil is so meditative; everything else drops away,” she says. “Growing things is a very empowering act; you start a connection and friendship with the plants that you care for.”

What many of us have missed is the thrill of filling up a trolley in person at a real-world garden centre. Last summer I had a giddy supermarket-sweep flurry around the Beth Chatto nursery in Essex, filling my basket with salvia, verbena and Stachys byzantina (lamb's ears) that are springing up again now, to my enormous delight.

But since the start of lockdown, garden centres around the country were closed, with devastating effect on many businesses who had already bought their stock (Grayson has also worried about the English growers once nurseries closed down, so started a cut flower service to support them).

Now, after heavy campaigning by various gardening bodies, many have reopened. Which, considering that 45 per cent of Britons say they have used gardening as a way to cope with lockdown – more than baking or reading – will do wonders for the nation’s mental health.

Willow Crossley came to gardening after experiencing debilitating post-natal depression, which she documents in her recent book, The Wild Journal, A year of nurturing yourself through nature. She says that she has used her garden in Oxfordshire as a way to ease her mind throughout lockdown. “I have found gardening to be the most peaceful, calming thing,” she says. “It’s just so magical.”

Willow Crossley: "“I love a trip to the garden centre at the best of times, but this will be a real treat now” - Clara Molden for The Telegraph
Willow Crossley: "“I love a trip to the garden centre at the best of times, but this will be a real treat now” - Clara Molden for The Telegraph

Despite sowing hundreds of seeds, browsing her local garden centre has been one of the things she says she’s really missed. “I love a trip to the garden centre at the best of times, but this will be a real treat now. It will actually encourage us to stay home more, by giving us something to do in the garden.”

More geraniums and pelargoniums are at the top of her list to buy. She particularly loves ‘Supreme White’, a pretty ivy-leaved trailing pelargonium and P. sidoides, a pelargonium with dark maroon flowers that rise elegantly on delicate stems out of silvery grey rosette-clustered leaves. The tip, Crossley adds, “is not to water them too much, they love that Mediterranean climate, and to bring pots of geraniums inside in the winter.”

Her latest “obsession”, as she calls it, is Tellima grandiflora, for the backs of borders, which flowers from now until July. The RHS recommends humus-rich, moist soil in partial shade, but that they will tolerate drier spots in the shade, or full sun in moist soil.

She says that the garden centres will be full of dahlias, which provide “instant gratification and are great for borders or pots”. They really should be in the ground already, but she says, “nature has a miraculous way of catching up, even if you’re only just planting them out now.”

Kitten Grayson adds a good – and cheap - garden centre buy are nasturtiums “which will already be in leaf and you can train up a wall or put in pots and grow up a sweet pea trellis.” The petals are edible, so can brighten up summer salads or cocktails.

If you didn’t sow your own sweet peas, they are available as plants now in the nurseries and are fantastically easy to grow – they need full sun, lots of water and a 6ft support to climb. “They’re brilliant because once you plant them, you have cut flowers for the whole summer.”

Another Grayson recommendation – that her devotees would recognise from her flamboyant displays – are Japanese anemones, “which are beautiful” and are happy in any garden soil and will romp across their bed.

Crossley says that the veg patch is her husband Charlie’s domain, but that now is a good time to buy tomato plants to plant out now. She adds that a local friend recently dropped off a tray of baby vegetable plants, including young radishes, “which are really quick and satisfying to grow.” Grayson adds that strawberry plants will bring a lot of pleasure – and are very easy flowerbed tenants.

But before we get giddy with shoppers’ delight, Grayson warns that “hydrangeas, shrubs and plants like climbing roses should be bought and planted from October onwards.” Not that can stop you dreaming. “The thing about being a gardener is that you live in an entirely positive world that is ever evolving,” she says. “You’re always thinking about how to make that world more beautiful and learning all the time.”

Top 10 plants to buy right now

Pelargonium 'Supreme White'

Pelargonium in bloom  -  Frank Sommariva
Pelargonium in bloom - Frank Sommariva

Pelargonium sidoides

Pelargonium sidoides - Manfred Ruckszio
Pelargonium sidoides - Manfred Ruckszio

Tellima grandiflora

Tellima grandiflora -  Andrew Kearton 
Tellima grandiflora - Andrew Kearton

Dahlias

Dahlias - Kevin Dawson 
Dahlias - Kevin Dawson

Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums -  Juergen Baumann 
Nasturtiums - Juergen Baumann

Sweet peas

Sweet peas -  Andrew Crowley
Sweet peas - Andrew Crowley

Japanese anemones

White Japanese anemone - Getty Images
White Japanese anemone - Getty Images

Tomato plants

Tomato plants - Alamy Stock Photo
Tomato plants - Alamy Stock Photo

Radishes

Radishes - Alamy 
Radishes - Alamy

Strawberries

Strawberries - Jacky Parker Photography
Strawberries - Jacky Parker Photography

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