Our trial grounds
The main reason we have trial grounds at our Suffolk headquarters is so that we can assess new flower and vegetable varieties before deciding whether they are good enough to offer to our customers.  Plants are bred all round the world and there is no guarantee that a variety from Australia, the USA or Japan, for example, will perform well in the UK.

It is sometimes a little difficult to keep up with all the developments, but at least by growing them ourselves, under the guidance of one of the finest growers in the country, we can see for ourselves whether they match the claims made by their breeders.  The trial grounds also enable us to check that the stocks of the seeds we already offer are true to type and of high quality.

Press day
Once a year we also like to show off our trial grounds, which, even in a poor summer such as 2008, look really colourful by the middle of August, to members of the gardening press.  Representatives from your favourite gardening magazines, gardening correspondents from national newspapers and other well known ‘faces’ congregated recently at our trials and had what we hope was an interesting and informative day with us.  And with vegetable growing becoming increasingly popular we even invited a local chef along to cook them dishes made from vegetables picked from our trial grounds that very morning.

We gardeners are seldom satisfied with the weather, but this year really has been a difficult growing season for all of us.  Despite all the weather threw at them (and they also have to contend with the local wild rabbit population which views the trials as the local takeaway) Brian and his team rose to the challenge and most species were looking good for the arrival of the journalists.

Good performers
In this cool and very wet summer, it is interesting to note what is still looking good on the trail grounds in September.  For a start, the rudbeckias look fantastic, but they always do, come rain or come shine.  They really are one of the most brilliant and accommodating of all annual flowers!  Penstemons and seed-raised dahlias are also looking really good, while French marigolds, and especially the tetraploid varieties such as the Zeniths, are flowering their hearts out.

Antirrhinums, which sometimes have gone over by the end of July, are still showing good colour, while it is plain to see that most of the pansies have simply revelled in this cool, moist summer.  No sign of burn-out from them this year!  A bed of larkspur is really sparkling like jewels in various shades of blue, pink and white.  Cleome, too, is also full of flower and shows no sign of slowing down.  Helichrysum, widely grown for indoor dried arrangements, have also stood up well to recent deluges and look good for several weeks yet.

First year flowering perennials
More and more gardeners are latching on to first year flowering perennials and treating them as summer bedding to widen the range and scope of flowers they grow.  We have a whole bed of these which we showed to the gardening press if they needed proof that these smashing perennials can put on a really great display just a few months from sowing.  And whatever they do this year, they will be even stronger and more free flowering next year!