hanging basket demonstration

On Wednesday 2nd April the Titchfield Gardeners' Club were delighted to welcome Louise and her colleague from Abbeycroft Nursery for Hanging Basket Demonstration.

Abbeycroft Nursery is a family run nursery based near Segensworth, Hampshire and run by Louise, her husband and their two children. The Nursery started some 30 years ago selling only bedding and vegetable plants and hanging baskets. Today Abbeycroft Nursery offers a vast variety of bedding plants, hanging baskets, herbs, trees, shrubs, hedging, perennials and so much more. The family are very passionate about what they do and knowledgeable, offering advice on planting, growing and maintaining the vast range of plants, trees and hedging. The Nursery prides itself by providing plants at their very best in the season.

One of their specialties is their hanging baskets, which are custom made to order by Louise, who gave us a demonstration of how to make three types of hanging basket. Hanging basket season generally kicks of mid-April to beginning May, dependent, of course, on the weather. This year we are having a very late start to the growing season and, although it was still a bit early for starting a hanging basket and the plants were not, as yet in full bloom, Louise still managed to assemble three stunning examples.

We started with a closed rattan V frame basket with a plastic lining. Firstly, make sure there are holes in the bottom of your lining, if punch a few in to allow for drainage, then put your compost straight in.  However, don’t overfill the basket with compost, leave at least 1” to allow for watering. Add some slow-release feed in the compost and start planting. A Geranium was put into the middle of the basket, surrounded by foliage plant, a verbena, which goes very well in a basket as it copes with sun and wind as well as some shade. Diacia is also good for baskets as it gives an abundance of flowers and is very hardy.  Petunias are always a favourite, and this year there are several new varieties and ranges for hanging baskets.

Louise mentioned that with square baskets you don’t need to put in too many flowers, as in a week or two the small plugs soon fill up the space. Louise also prefers to use similar colours in her baskets, pink, purple and white seems to be the most popular, but the choice lies totally with the client! Our first basket was duly planted and looking lovely, and some lucky person won it to take home through our raffle, sadly it wasn’t me.

For the next basket a wire frame was used. Wool moss was used to help fill it, rather than normal moss, it’s available at B&Q and through Amazon and helps to retain moisture through the season. The wool moss was used as a bottom layer than compost was put in on top, then another layer of wool moss, followed by compost “lasagna style”. The plants were pushed in sideways into the compost through the holes. In this composition Nepeta was used as well as Hebe, which has been renamed Veronica! 

Louise did advise us that many plants have been renamed this year and more will be changed next year, so when asking for a plant name you could find it a bit more difficult without some help from the experts!

The plants in the wire basket were planted in rows using every other hole and plants planted on their side. For the final layer at the top, make a “roll” with the moss wool and lay it on top of your “lasagna” layers and add the final layer of compost on top and put one geranium, or begonia as a centre piece.

Louise didn’t recommend using Fuchsia's as they can get too large. She also mentioned that the colour white in between colours can help “lift” the basket as it catches the light and the eye.

Our final basket to be demonstrated was the most popular, a round 14” basket. Louise filled this up with compost to about 1” from the top to allow for watering and added slow-release fertiliser to the compost.  A geranium was put in the middle and the new “Itsy” range of petunias were added. This range now comes in loads of new colours. Louise also recommended the “Spark” range which has yellow in the middle of the flower and again, comes in loads of colour choices.

She suggested a centre plant plus up to 5 plants would fill the basket adequately.

And thereby, in a very short time, we were shown three masterpieces of baskets ready for hanging. So if you would like to get creative, we highly recommend a visit to Abbeycroft, where Louise and her team are ready to give advice on the many new and old favourite varieties of flowers ideally suited for hanging baskets, or you can simply put in your order and Louise will use her years of experience to create you a stunning basket to your choice.

A very big thank you to Louise and Abbeycroft Nursery for giving us a very enjoyable, rewarding and educational evening on the art of putting together a hanging basket.

Katrien Burrows