Plant Pots and Oodles of Great New Plant Ideas

I had an enormous treat this week. I was invited to attend the Garden Press Event. This is an annual get together in London for people who write about gardening. I’ve never been before and loved it. Not least because it’s rammed full of companies who supply plant pots, gardening kit and plants, showing their new stuff to people like me.

Well, being there was like being a kid in a sweet shop. I not only got some great new ideas for plant pots, but I heard some gardening gossip about Alan Titchmarsh’s butt! I met some great plants suppliers and had a bit of a history lesson too. Let me tell you more…

Plant Pots

As you would expect, almost everywhere I looked the emphasis was on eco gardening. And when it came to plant pots, this was no exception. There were companies promising that their pots are CO neutral and 100% recyclable. One of these is Capi. The Dutch company creates stylish looking pots. These include a 100% waste collection where the pots are made from things like fishing nets and other ocean waste.

Similarly, Woodlodge was promoting its EcoMade range which  includes pots and planters manufactured from reclaimed ocean plastic and wood chipping waste. 

Wool Pots

But favourite of the ‘eco plant pots’ bunch was the Wool Pots. These aren’t necessarily decorative pots for your patio or home, but highly practical pots for bringing on cuttings, seedlings etc. That said, I also think they look rather lovely planted up with pansies and daffodils!

Graham Hull, one of the top blokes behind this idea, told me all about it. “People in the UK send over 500 million unrecyclable plastic plant pots to landfill every year. At the same time we know of farmers, in despair, burning their wool because they have no viable market for their fleeces. These two facts kind of came together in our heads – and we came up with Wool Pots.”

The pots are 100% wool. So they’re certainly a brilliant alternative to plastic pots and a huge gain to the planet. But for Graham and his business partner Tom, that’s just the start of the benefits.

“We have friends who farm sheep and it gives us huge pride to continue the British tradition of product innovation and creativity to help them create a new market for their wool,” says Graham.

This is all great, but using a wool pot as an alternative to a conventional plastic pot is also good for your gardening. That’s because wool has some useful properties.

Great Wool Facts

• It makes great plant pots.
• Wool is a natural slug and snail deterrent.
• It acts as a water condenser channeling moisture downwards to the plant’s roots.
• Wool is strong and 100% natural.
• It eventually decomposes into a bio rich plant food.

Graham showed me how well the pots rot – he had a display example doing just that! This contrasts massively in my mind with the coir pots you often see plants in and promoted as an eco alternative – they never seem to rot.

Prices for Wool Pots range from £7.99 for a pack of ten up to £49 for 100. You can buy them at the Wool Pots shop.

Metal Plant Pots

There were also plant pots a plenty on the Arthur Jack & Co stand but these hadn’t been anywhere near a sheep. Well I don’t think so!

Hand-crafted and made in the UK from galvanised steel, the company’s products create a Georgian ‘stately home’ feel. They include a classic window box. This has adjustable legs to make the box level on an uneven surface.

They were also showing a large round planter which I think would be good for topiary, roses, shrubs or small trees.

If metal’s your thing, the company also offers a sturdy looking obelisk, water butts and a self-contained water feature. Rumour has it (here’s the gardening gossip) Alan Titchmarsh has a couple of these handsome water butts. He apparently sent a lovely handwritten thank you note to the company. (Ahhh, as if I needed another reason to love Alan Titchmarsh!)

I stood next to this water feature for a little too long on the Arthur Jack stand. It was lovely and calming but it eventually had me regretting that third cup of coffee, and dashing for the loo!

Plant Pots and Clever Ideas from Crocus

There were some nifty products on the Crocus stand. Yes, they had the obligatory lovely clay pots and other rustic containers jam packed full of ferns and hellebores. But what really caught my eye was their ingenious stackable obelisk.

This is such a clever idea for those who want a plant support but also want to be able to store it away when not in use.

I also liked their clever product for holding fat balls for birds. I think three of these in a drift through a flower bed would look very effective and would really help me in my bid to attract wild birds.

New Roses

In addition to all the talk of plant pots and other plant parafernalia (ooh I’ve never typed that before), there were also stands where plants quite rightly took centre stage.

David Austen Roses provided the ultimate tease at the show. They are unveiling not one but two new varieties this year.

The whole process of creating a new English Roses takes around 12 years. That’s because each chosen variety has probably involved as many as 40,000 individual cross pollinations and 350,000 individual seeds. There’s then field trials and further assessment with only the most promising being monitored before the healthiest is chosen. So it’s a very big deal coming up with two roses that no one in the world will have seen before.

The two new editions will be officially launched at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show and Hampton Court Garden Festival. So even my charm couldn’t secure for you a sneak peak at the beauties.

However, I can tantalise you with these two pictures (above and below) which give you a hint of what’s to come…

The whole process of creating a new English Roses takes around 12 years. That’s because each chosen variety has probably involved as many as 40,000 individual cross pollinations and 350,000 individual seeds.

UK Grown Tropical Plants

In addition to roses, I love tropical plants. But I’m the first to admit my tropical plant skills are not as good as I would like. So I was absolutely thrilled to see that a new supplier of tropical plants to our homes is on the market – Tropical Plants UK

The company is the brainchild of Opperman Plants, a family-run business which for over 25 years has been producing tropical houseplants and outdoor pots plants for our high street retailers. They produce 8 million plants each year from their facilities here in the UK.

Luckily for us, they’re now offering their expertise to people like you and me, by selling direct to the public through Tropical Plants UK. There’s an amazing range to choose from – over 400 plants including some rare varieties. All plants we buy will come fresh from the nursery bed to our home within 48 hours, complete with care instructions direct from the experienced growers themselves.

I love the sound of this and for one will be trying them out. I’m also going to ask the company to provide a guest blog for me on tropical plants – so watch this space. But in the meantime, checkout the lovely Alex, telling me all about her family’s exciting new venture on my instagram

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A post shared by Blooming Lucky garden blogger (@louisefindlaywilson)

National Trust & Blue Diamond

My final thrill at the event was to hear about an amazing 5 year initiative between Blue Diamond (the UK’s second biggest garden centre group) and the National Trust.

As part of the collaboration the National Trust is going to allow Blue Diamond to propagate some of their most significant and unusual plants. These include Sir Isaac Newton’s Apple Tree and The Ankerwycke Yew.

The plants will be available to buy exclusively through the Blue Diamond Garden Centres with a percentage of sales going back to the National Trust to fund its work.

As part of this, the Powis Castle bare root rose collection of six roses was launched in November. The castle is one of the Trust’s most visted rose gardens. From March you will be able to buy potted versions of the roses for £22.99.

Other National Trust inspired roses will be launched in March included Rosa Octavia Hill, named after one of the founders of the National Trust, along with roses named after Trust properties such as Rosa Biddulph Grange, Rosa Tatton and even Rosa National Trust!

In the Summer, Blue Diamond will launch a rose named after Mottisfont, a National Trust property in Hampshire, which is home to the National Collection of pre-1900 old-fashioned roses.

Obviously the collaboration is about more than roses. From mid-March there will be a collection of over 600 flowering varieties of seeds. Herbaceous border collections inspired by the borders at Nymans – West Sussex, Hill Top – Cumbria, Sissinghurst Castle – Kent and Hidcote – Gloucestershire are planned for April. In late August there will be a blub collection.

Isaac Newton’s Apple Tree

I’m most excited by the Isaac Newton Apple Tree – a variety known as the Flower of Kent. It’s in the orchard of his childhood home, Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire. Even with my fail in physics GCSE (or o-levels as they were then) I know that the apple tree is intertwined with his discovery of gravity.

Blue Diamond will be offering people the chance to bit for a limited number of Isaac Newton’s Apple Trees, propagated from the original tree in an excusive auction later in the year.

Similarly laden with historical significance, the Ankerwyke Yew is on the opposite bank of the River Thames to the meadows of Runnymede. It is said to have been witness to the signing of the Magna Carta. It’s also rumoured to be where Henry VIII proposed to Anne Boleyn in the Tudor era. In 2024 people will be able to bid for a limited number of Yew Trees propagated from the original Ankerwyke Yew.

So that’s it a whistle-stop tour of just some of the things I saw at the Garden Press Event. Plant pots, garden gossip, historical gems and everything in between. Throw in the free lunch and you can understand why I loved it!

Happy gardening x