Notes From My Garden

Alexandra Campbell gets an early look at next year’s gardening trends.

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YOU may feel it’s too soon to be talking about next year in the garden. After all, we’ve got another couple of months of 2017 to go.

But knowing the trends will give you an idea of what to look out for. And you can often ask garden centres to order things in.

I’ve just spent two days at GLEE, the exhibition where garden centres and gardeners find out what’s going to be big next year. These are the innovations I think you’ll like most.

“Balcony gardening” is really about to take off. There will be more “balcony rail troughs” designed to fit over balcony rails, some with self-watering systems in the base.

A self-watering system is usually a chamber just below the roots, with some kind of wicking system up to the roots so that they’re not sitting in water.

You fill the balcony planter with water, and it slowly releases it to the plants as needed. I couldn’t find any of these new generation balcony planters on the market now, but they should be available soon.