A Trip to Ball Colegrave with Longacres

The Longacres team were invited to attend the annual Ball Colegrave Summer Showcase alongside our bedding plant supplier, Perfect Choice. This incredible event displays some of the best and brightest plant varieties on the market, as well as some never-before-seen flowers, and a sneak peek at what we can expect to see on our shelves in the coming years!

The Creative minds at Ball Colegrave are working behind the scenes to develop a dazzling variety of new plants in exciting colours and different sizes to fulfil our insatiable appetite for all things plants. Each year, experimental plants are trialled in their vast grow houses, which they open up for growers and garden retailers to view during the summer.

In the spotlight this year were the impressive Beacon Impatiens, a brand-new hardy variety that are resistant to downy mildew and disease. Beacon Impatiens will be available in a wide selection of colours, and are perfect for baskets, window boxes or garden beds and borders.

Our personal favourite from the day were the violet shades, as shown in the image below. They stood out due to their delicate petals and impactful, bright colours.

As well as showcasing new varieties, Ball Colegrave illustrates the best ways to display plants for the biggest impact in your gardens. For those looking for fresh ideas, the exhibits are fantastic at inspiring creativity and introducing alternative ways to style plants. For example, you can group together a variety of different plants with the same shade to colour block an area, or group a selection of the same plant, in a range of different colours, to make an eye catching, harmonious display.

Contrasting colours in flowers, such as yellow petals surrounding deep red centres, can be real attention grabbers. The Coreopsis growing in the borders at Ball Colegrave caught our eye instantly.

When planning your borders for optimum effect, chose a plant you love, for example a dahlia, and then rather than planting it singularly, try grouping it in multiples through the space. Planting in groups of odd numbers tends to work best. Start with three of a kind if space is limited but scale up numbers where possible and repeat the same plant in different shades to achieve the most eye-catching results. This is an easy way to fill large areas, as shown in the image below, taken during our visit to Ball Colegrave.

If you are looking to break up your colourful plants, then greenery is the obvious way to go. Plants in different shades of green, with contrasting leaf forms and textures, can make as bold an impact as those with bright colourful flowers. Foliage plants can be grouped alongside flowering varieties to make their bright colours stand out further.

Hanging baskets are a great example of using greenery to give depth to an area, with popular choices including Creeping Charlie and Creeping Jenny, two well-known types of trailing plant. The trailing green hanging baskets at Ball Colegrave highlighted how you can take something simple, and create an impressive display with just one variety of plant.

Foliage plants such as Euphorbia or Miscanthus are great for adding height to beds and borders. The inspiring raised beds at Ball Colegrave showcased this in a simple yet impactful way. The use of green shades alongside each other helped to highlight each individual variety, without distracting from each plant’s unique characteristics.

When plants come to mind, they are often pictured in garden borders and plant pots, but the show stopping displays at Ball Colegrave took the concept of planting a few steps further and showed us how we can fill any space or surface with glorious plants. Wall displays are an innovative way to grow plants in tight vertical spaces. Using a series of wall mounted pots, you can make a display like the one pictured above, which shows a wall of Heuchera in a range of colours and a selection of grasses and ferns for contrast and depth.

Our Longacres team had a fantastic day out at the Ball Colegrave Summer Showcase, and would like to thank our bedding plant supplier, Perfect Choice, for having us as their guests. Also, a big thank you to the team at Ball Colegrave for putting on another fantastic display of plants. We look forward to seeing their new plants on our shelves in the coming years, and we know that you will too!