A Week of Flowers, Day 1

If you love cartoon characters or want specimens that your kids can relate to easily, then these Spongebob Flowers are a must-have!

Enjoy a Virtual Christmas Tour of the Biltmore House. Happy Holidays from the HGIC Staff.

When I set off into the garden yesterday to pick materials for today’s vase, I fully expected to come back with a little posy and certainly not a bunch, Winter not being quite as generous in her offerings as other seasons of the year are.

Working through winter tasks in the garden when time and weather align favourably, there are plenty of opportunities to look forward and back, usually simultaneously, such as with crab apple Malus ‘Evereste’. This sad, mushy state was pretty normal for M ‘Golden Hornet’, but the blackbirds have usually taken all the peachy crabs from ‘Evereste’ well before now, leaving me looking forward to the pretty spring blossom or at least to when I am able to remove the offending fruit. Even the red Christmas lights do little to enhance their ugliness.

On day 12 of advent we’re offering the chance to win a hand painted fern bin and tissue box from Master the Art, worth £180.

During the Christmas season, the Biltmore Conservatory is filled with poinsettias, orchids, and other exotic plants.

Blooms are almost non-existent in the garden at the moment after several days of frost, but I had two options: another pelargonium from the Coop, or stems of the overwintering Salvia ‘Phyllis Fancy’ in the working greenhouse. The latter, which never made it back into a border last year after its previous overwintering, remaining in its pot in disgrace, won the toss. After continued underperformance, I have been on the point of banishing it altogether, but now plan to give it a reprieve, albeit keeping it in a pot rather than giving it border space. However, I am not holding my breath…

Day 10 of our advent prize draw gives entrants the opportunity to win a DNA’24 DB26 Bread Knife from Savernake worth £199. Please note you must be over 18 to enter this prize draw.

Our eleventh prize is a Gold Smokebox, worth £105 from Lambton & Jackson.

Day 9 of our Christmas advent prize draw gives you the chance to win WOLF-Garten’s Bypass Loppers worth £119.99.

Hidden behind the door for day 8 of our advent prize draw is a bundle of tools from gardening brand Wilkinson Sword, worth £114.97.

Enter our day 7 prize draw for your chance to win ‘his and hers’ Buckingham wellington boots worth £109.98 from Harbour Lifestyle.