Boosting sales at Gardeners World Live

Boosting sales the Seabrook way

A busy gardening show and launch for new foundation name.

The warmest temperature so far this year didn’t deter visitors and if sales at BBC Gardeners’ World Live in June were anything to go by, gardeners are very much in the buying mood. Sales of Verbena ‘Margaret’s Memory’ were reported to be particularly strong. The show was also a platform for designers and nurseries to show off their creative skills and talents and to display new cultivars in the Show Gardens, Beautiful Borders and Floral Marquee.

Winning the highest Platinum award was the Peter Seabrook tribute created by Neil Gow and a team of volunteers supported by the David Colegrave Foundation. The garden was inspired by 100 years of the BBC and celebrated Peter’s 60 years of broadcasting and writing. To recognise just how much Peter championed new plants, the display was also host to around 40 pots of new plants from colour summer bedding to shrubs brought along by many breeders and growers including Bransford Webbs, Hilliers, MNP Flowers, and Ray Evison Clematis, New Leaf Plants, Whetmans, Ball Horticulture, Volmary, Whartons Roses, Frank P Matthews.

Of those were two named for Peter, a new lavender sweet pea, stems of which were presented to Mary Berry by Adam Frost, and a climbing yellow rose with deep golden eye bred by Whartons. Some of the other plants were so new they are yet to be named.

Alison Seabrook Moore and Peter’s grandson Tom Moore celebrate the renaming of The Colegrave Seabrook Foundation.

Westland CEO, Edward Conroy, took time out from his annual sales conference to celebrate Peter Seabrook’s contribution to the industry. Colourful Streptocarpus and begonia from Dibleys Nurseries on the Dr Who inspired display.

Seeds of sweet pea ‘Peter Seabrook’, from Sow Successful, will be available to buy early autumn for September and October planting and £1.00 from every packet will be donated to the Floral Fantasia at RHS Hyde Hall, Essex, which was originally created and maintained by Peter Seabrook. For 2022, 10,000 packets will be available, increasing in 2023.

Lily ‘Dianthe’ a pollen-free cultivar