Giant begonia FAQs

Get the most from your giant begonias with a little help from our FAQs...

What will I receive?
You'll receive 14 extra-large tubers in the following colours: white, yellow, copper, salmon, orange, pink and red.

How big does each begonia grow to?
The begonias will grow up to 30cm (12") in height and the blooms will reach up to 15cm (6") across.

Are begonias perennial?
You can lift your begonia tubers, place them in dry peat, and keep them in a cool, dry, frost-free position over winter. Restart your tubers into growth the following March.
 
How long will my begonias flower for?
They'll flower from June through to October.

Sweet pea FAQs

Grow your aromatic sweet peas to their full potential with a little help from our FAQs... 

What will I receive?
The collection contains six multi-sown plugs (right) and a minimum of twenty seedlings in total. We’d recommend planting three multi-sown plugs in each basket, which provides at least ten seedlings per basket.

How big does each sweet pea plant grow to?
Each individual seedling will grow to about 15cm (6") in height and have a spread of 30cm - 46cm (12” - 18”). If you plant three plugs per basket, the display will reach about 15cm (6") in height and around 60cm (24") in width.
 
How many blooms are there per plant?
You'll enjoy literally hundreds of scented blooms per basket.

Are sweet peas perennial? 
No, sweet peas are hardy annuals.   

How long will my sweet peas flower for?
They'll flower for 4 - 6 weeks from the time you receive them up until the autumn. 

Can you plant them outside straight away?
Your sweet peas will be despatched to you, complete with the baskets, in the week starting Monday 9th March 2009. Although sweet peas are hardy, the baskets are best planted up as soon as you receive them and then kept in a light, frost-free environment for up to six weeks before putting outside. Alternatively, plant your sweet peas outside and use a fleece to protect them from any frosts until they're established.

Using poetry in the QVC Garden

Hi everyone, Adam here.

As you might have picked up from reading my earlier blogs, the theme of this year's QVC Chelsea garden is creating a space for two people to enjoy together. One of the ways I want to do this is using poems. 

The garden features stone walls along the the sides, and parts of these walls will be engraved with extracts from poems.

The idea is she sends a poem to him, and he responds with a poem to her. The poems are a secret until the garden is finished. I've chosen extracts from Wordsworth, Keats, Yeats and Tennyson, and as well as building on the themes of the garden, it's done to make me look slightly more intelligent than I actually am!

Have you ever thought of bringing poetry into your garden? Adding pieces of art that you like into your garden, whether sculpture, ornaments, poetry or mosaics, is a great way to make a garden your own.

Adam

Read more about the QVC Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2009.

Giant tree peony FAQs

To help you get the best out of our stunning tree peonies we've put together some useful FAQs...

What will I receive? You'll get three bare roots in the following varieties: white Xue Ta, pink Rou Fu Ronge and red Hya Wang.

What size do tree peonies grow to? About 1.5m (5ft) in height.

How many blooms per plant? A mature plant can produce more than one hundred flowers.

How long will the blooms last for? The flowers will last for 3-4 weeks depending on the weather. When in bud, tree peonies create a colourful lollypop effect as they're perfectly round and the size of golf balls. The buds may stay on the plant for months. During winter, the leaves on the new-growth buds are bright pink in colour.

Are tree peonies perennial? Yes, they'll come back year after year.

Can I plant them outside straight away? You can plant bare root tree peonies during winter and early spring if the soil is unfrozen.

Where shall I plant my tree peonies? We'd recommend planting your tree peonies into borders or containers. They need plenty of space to grow, so don’t crowd them with other plants. You'll find your tree peonies extremely hardy and they'll survive in both sun and shade. However, avoid completely exposed situations where petals could blow away quickly and shorten the life of the flowers.

Adam Frost's expert gardening advice

The QVC Garden is going really well - probably a little too well at the moment! Everything's happening quickly and going full steam ahead... I'm just waiting for something to go wrong!

Plants are sorted, paving is sorted, poems on the walls are sorted. It all feels a bit surreal at the moment, but I can't wait for May.

Designing your own garden

One of the reasons the QVC Garden is going so well is because I've kept things simple. My biggest tip to those of you looking to design your own garden is not to complicate it.

FAQs about our Hibiscus NewBiscus collection

To help you get the most from our striking Hibiscus NewBiscus collection, we've put together some useful FAQs...

What will I receive? 
You'll get four bare roots in the following varieties: Mauvellous, Fancy Eye, Red Sky and White Heaven.

What size does Hibiscus NewBiscus grow to?
The plant grows up to 91cm (36") in height, and the blooms grow to 28cm (11") in diameter.

How many blooms per plant?
When established in a garden, Hibiscus NewBiscus can have up to 100 flowers over a single blooming season.

Is NewBiscus perennial? 
Yes, NewBiscus is very winter-hardy. The underground eyes start to sprout in late spring, and NewBiscus flowers until October if the weather permits. After that, the shrub dies back and old stems may be removed.

How long will NewBiscus flower for?
From about June to October.

Adam Frost: Here's the QVC Garden for Chelsea

Hi everyone,

Preparations for the QVC Garden are going well and we're well organised at this point. Fingers crossed it will stay that way!

We've handed the RHS all the plans for the garden, and now we're finalising plant orders, sorting out a tree, and getting hard materials.

Here's one of the plans we submitted to the show organisers (right).

We're where we want to be for January, but it will be 1st May before you know it so it's really important to stay organised.

Meet Adam Frost - our new Chelsea designer

Hi everyone,

My name's Adam Frost and I'm designing the QVC Garden for Chelsea 2009. I've had gardens at Chelsea for the last two years and I can't wait to get back there again. It's so chaotic and exciting... brilliant!

This year's QVC Garden has a really relaxed feel. I've designed it with a slightly older couple in mind, so the garden is a comfortable place where they can sit around and unwind. My focus when designing a garden is always on the people using it.

On Wednesday I had my first QVC photo shoot. The freezing weather I'm used to, but never before have I had a make-up artist and stylist fussing about me. It was completely bizarre! When I got home I felt like I had to do something manly!

I'll be sharing my Chelsea experiences with you over the oncoming months, as well as some gardening tips, so watch this space.

Adam

Learn to... Garden

The latest in our Learn to... series is Learn to Garden. We met up with our in-house expert, Richard Jackson to get his top gardening tips...

1. Grow spuds on the patio
All you need is a 30.5cm (12") plastic pot or poly bag, five early cropping seed potatoes and a bag of multipurpose compost.

Start the potatoes sprouting in egg boxes on the windowsill in January or February, then plant them into the pot or poly bag in March.

Keep the plants well watered and in late May you'll be harvesting the yummiest, freshest potatoes you've ever tasted!

For more tips on growing potatoes catch my gardening shows on QVC throughout January.

Simon Biagi on his winter gardening

During the winter months I do a lot of virtual gardening. Basically, this entails me sitting on my couch and looking out into the garden checking that there are no rabbits eating my plants and the grass doesn't need cutting.

I expend no energy with a spade at all! I just sit there reading gardening magazines, planning and designing how I can make my garden look like Richard Jackson's.

Of course, come springtime the plans never seem to materialise and whatever plants I do put in my garden still get eaten by the rabbits, and the grass is always in need of a trim. But as my Dad used to say…" that's gardening!"

Why don't you try it out this winter?

Simon