Plant catalogues keep dropping through the letterbox, and hopeful emails pop up in my inbox on an almost daily basis. 'Tis the season to buy seeds, and summer flowering bulbs, and Streptocarpus, while one alpine supplier has jumped the gun by already sending out their list of dwarf bulbs for delivery from September. Broadleigh Bulbs always used to be the first, getting their autumn list out just before the Chelsea Flower Show, though they have announced that they are going the other way to a wholly online presence, and that this summer's printed catalogue will be their last.
I started off hunting for fuchsias online. Growers won't be sending them out yet, it is still too cold, and if they were I wouldn't want them at this stage. Thinking about fuchsias was purely an exercise in escapism, a mental leap forward from a cold January day to the warmth of late summer. Consulting my garden visiting notebook I saw that the small, dark red variety I had greatly liked at Chelsea was called 'Katjan', and checking in my 2015 Chelsea catalogue I saw there had been two fuchsia specialists exhibiting. Bizarrely, the one of them who showed 'Katjan' did not do mail order. Why would you go to all the trouble and expense of staging an exhibit in the pavilion at the Chelsea Flower Show and not sell by mail order? I'm still trying to work that out. Fuchsias are ideal for selling as young rooted cuttings and are easy to post and pack: if it had been a standard tree I'd set my heart on I'd have understood the problem.
I turned to the website of the other Chelsea fuchsia exhibitor, but then surfing the web for second opinions on some of the varieties they stocked found another fuchsia specialist, with a longer list and cheaper prices, who also stocked 'Katjan' but did not go to the bother of staging Chelsea exhibits for my entertainment. It seemed mean to abandon both of the suppliers who had piqued my interest in fuchsias in the first place, but such is life. Customers are mean. This third website offered the option of compiling a wish list and of comparing plants, only when I placed 'Katjan' in my wishlist and tried to look at it, the site told me I would have to register first. I obediently typed in my name, address, phone number, and email address in duplicate, but still couldn't view my wishlist until my account had been authorised. What? It's not as though I wanted to buy their plants on credit, merely to start composing a list of varieties I might like to buy later with a view to whittling it down to a sensible length.
The website went on insisting that my account needed to be authorised for the next forty-eight hours, then forgot my details and said I'd have to register. I gave up. I'll probably be back once the weather warms up enough for them to despatch plants and me to want them, since they had a good list and I do want 'Katjan', but after they had drummed up a potential new customer entirely on the strength of other companies' marketing efforts it seemed stupid not to grab hold of them.
The competitive powers of the internet are tough if you're a grower. The rose specialist Peter Beales sent me an email reminding me that their offer of free delivery on three or more bare root roses expired at the end of January. This prompted me to look at their site, since I had been thinking of trying to grow some more ramblers up into the trees at the edge of the wood. The brambles did so well, I thought maybe I could replace them with roses if I chose from varieties rated suitable for growing in poor soil and those that were relatively shade tolerant. And I think there's room for one or two more in the back garden, along from 'Paul's Himalayan Musk'. I tried to grow Rosa banksiae 'Lutea' there, but two cold winters more or less did for it, and anyway I realised that an early yellow rose was likely to overlap with the flowering of a red rhododendron nearby in the wood, and that the combination would not do either of them favours. Pink or purple roses would be a safer bet, then they could coincide with the rhododendron or 'Paul's Himalayan Musk' as much as they liked.
Alas for Peter Beales. Searching once again for more information on some of the roses nudging their way towards my shortlist, I stumbled on the website of Trevor White, another Norfolk specialist in old roses. I knew of the firm at second hand, since he used to supply the plant centre where I used to work until he cut back on wholesale to start building up his own retail business. They were always good quality plants, and I now see on his site that he originally trained with Peter Beales. His prices were uniformly a third cheaper than his more famous and multiple Chelsea gold medal winning competitor, and he had all bar one of the varieties I'd been thinking about, plus the David Austin bred yellow flowered repeat rambler 'Malvern Hills' that Peter Beales doesn't list.
I have not actually bought any roses yet. It's always a good idea to wait a few days then reassess the initial list, which is almost always too long after the excitement of reading all those plant descriptions. Instead I contented myself with a seed order from Chiltern Seeds. I'd already placed one last week with Derry Watkins at Special Plants and must now be firm with myself and remember that that's enough seeds, Ed..
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