Show us your gardening purchases 2025

Those are a few of my favourite things.

 

Went into Morrisons for some leeks today, came out with this little acer for £4. No idea why I suddenly felt the urge to buy it, I've never considered I needed one before. But on the walk home I realised I had a perfect place for it. It will go in the middle of my "daffodil pond" (an old derelict pond I filled in). It will have the perfect amount of shade there, without shading anything else out, and that pond badly needs a feature plant.

Has anyone else noticed the display of summer bulbs outside Morrisons? Lots of cardboard boxes with colourful pictures of lilies, dahlias, gladioli etc and all of them completely empty, as they have been for at least the last 2 months. And yet my store gets them out every morning and puts them away every evening. Why? Is it just for decoration?

 

Maybe they are selling out quickly @Escarpment. Do you get to the SM first thing? I always thought these boxes came pre-filled and would be replaced with new boxes each day or when the existing ones were sold out. What you could do is put a small nick in one of the empty boxes and see if it's the same one next day!

 

No this is first thing in the morning. The boxes are empty from the moment they are put outside.

 

From what I heard from someone who had worked at Morrisons, plants are now "looked after" by anyone. So I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't bother to check empty boxes.

 

I believe anyone who works for a supermarket has probably given up thinking, it would be like banging you head against a wall, just do as you are told.

They even have some poor individual, where I go, holding up a sign with an arrow on it pointing to the smallest queue at the checkout.

How they get people to do this kind of stuff is a mystery to me.

 

I suspect management have told them they have to keep putting the boxes out just for the look of it. Maybe they think the colourful display catches people's attention when they're getting out of their cars.

 

Maybe it is a cunning marketing ploy. Pretend there is a shortage, that these things sell out quickly, and then make some stock available which people dive on thinking “These are popular, therefore I must have some”, thereby assuaging any uncomfortable FOMO!

 

Went to buy a 500 ml spray bottle of SB plant invigorator as well as other things at GC. There are 3 sprays with different prices. Read labels and researched on line when back home and there appears to be no difference in what they do. Does any one know the difference apart from the price?

 

I did a round tour of three GC's this morning. I came back with a few more than intended . These are to refresh my alpine trough:



These ferns are for a shady border and the Teucrium for my sunny bank:

 

Sounds like a great way to spend a morning! Lovely plants as well.

 

Thank you @CostasK. It’s a regular tour, they are all within about 5 miles from here. Strange I haven’t got my own parking space by now .

 

My guess would be that it attracts people from further away and they might be tempted by other things when they see they are empty.

There was an experiment done a while ago where a shop only put one Mars bar out at a time and because people thought it was the last one, they were more inclined to buy it. I can't remember how much it increased sales compared to the full box but it was surisingly more.

 

My new succulent - Euphorbia ferox ...
Native to South Africa, and I've seen it in that garden centre every time I've been there since last year, poor thing, it was getting fed up and feeling unloved, so I've now given it a good home

 

It looks a prickly specimen, @Michael Hewett.