Garden
Centres and The Precautionary Tale of Impulse
Buying By Kim
Lenaghan
There
was a time when I could most easily be seduced
into spending vast amounts of money on numerous
products I didnÂ’t need and would never
use by the scents and smells of department store
cosmetics counters. Now my secret shopping vice
is garden centres. The second I drive into the
carpark my hands sweat, my heart pounds and
my plastic cards are practically sprinting out
of my wallet toward the till. ItÂ’s like
the cry of a manic City trader "buy, buy,
buy" as I load up my trolley with hellebores,
potentillas, bougainvillea and clematis with
exotic sounding names like ‘Perle d’Azur’
or ‘Etoille Violette’. ‘Chanel
No. 5’ and ‘Elizabeth Arden’
just canÂ’t compare
Most
garden centres are now so attractively and thoughtfully
laid out that itÂ’s a joy to walk around
them. All those healthy, beautifully tended
plants, that riot of colour, it just sends me
and, judging by the queues at the checkouts,
everybody else into a complete buying frenzy.
The problem is that you donÂ’t always stop
to think what exactly youÂ’re bringing home.
IÂ’ve bought trees that will grow and spread
like JackÂ’s Beanstalk for a tiny urban
garden, IÂ’ve bought plants that love the
sun for tubs on a shady patio, IÂ’ve bought
acid loving shrubs to plant in a garden that
has an alkaline soil - all because I got carried
away by the wonder of it all and threw caution,
advice and common sense to the wind.
So
try and overcome that urge to buy everything
before you by deciding in advance what kind
of garden you currently have and what sort of
look or plan you want to achieve. If you want
a cottage garden then stick to buying plants
like climbing roses, delphiniums, poppies, foxgloves,
honeysuckles, whatever. No matter how attractive
the clipped box and the succulent yuccas look
in the garden centre they definitely donÂ’t
say cottage garden.
Determine
what kind of soil you have, where the shade
and sunshine are and donÂ’t buy plants that
are inappropriate for the conditions just because
you like the look of them. They may well survive
but theyÂ’ll never thrive. When the label
says ‘full sunshine’ it really does
mean full sunshine. As for containers, some
things just have to be planted in the ground,
however much you wish it otherwise. So donÂ’t
take some poor, unsuspecting plant and try to
adapt it to the wrong conditions, just find
a better alternative for your particular situation.
Think
of gardening as being like fashion - if youÂ’ve
legs are like tree trunks you wouldnÂ’t
wear a mini skirt so why would you be daft enough
to plant a Fremontodendron ‘California
GloryÂ’ on an exposed north facing wall
that never gets any significant sunshine. Well,
I wouldnÂ’t wear the mini but I did kill
the Fremontodendron and thatÂ’s why IÂ’m
sharing this cautionary tale and hopefully learning
from my mistakes.
IÂ’m
not saying that I should or could stop going
to garden centres - IÂ’d need to go into
rehab for that - IÂ’m merely reminding myself,
and anyone else who might suffer from a similar
tendency, that impulse buying is as expensive
and fruitless in a garden centre as it is at
the make up counter in Boots.
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