Plant Support

Can other gardeners stop me from spending a fortune on plants I really don't need

Trellises. Arches. Tripods. Bamboo. All offer support to the gardener. But these handy, inanimate objects cannot deliver the support required to the plant obsessed, those incapable of entering a supermarket, bargain store, garden centre or nursery without coming out with a trolley full of treats and a decimated bank balance.

It’s at this time of year that it begins. The months of Sainsbury’s entrance being a desolate, empty space are over as bedding plants are put within tempting view. The perspex hut outside Morrisons has been stocked with compost, tools and seeds. And Home Bargains is shifting towering camellia for £8 a pop right by the tills. I think of it as the gardeners’ alternative to point of sale UPF. The inescapable must-haves for the forthcoming spring.

When I lived in Brighton, my haul was limited by both the size of the bijou courtyard at the back of our basement flat and the fact it was both north facing and at the mercy of salty coastal air. Little thrived in that space, although I took huge pride in the fatsia japonica which went from two to ten feet in the space of two summers, the mad throng of geraniums which refused to wilt and the damp glory of the ferns that grew by the kitchen window.

The game changed, however, last spring. Newly installed in a suburban semi in the south of Sheffield, with both a front and back garden, the options were myriad, the bargains impossible to ignore. Clematis, verbena, rhododendron, sweet pea, hebe, aster, acer, viola, begonias, lilies, penstemon, oxeye daisies, black-eyed susan. A hodgepodge of competing sizes and colours bought purely because they tickled my fancy when I popped out for a pint of milk or 50l of compost.

And that’s not including the vegetables, the fruit bushes and the herbs. These all had the added benefit of bringing joy deep into autumn and early winter.

Rosemary, lavender and box, February 2026 © Joe Minihane

But now I am hungry again and ready to feast. In late January I went all out at a sale in nearby Dronfield, returning home with three salvia, a trio of climbing hydrangea, syringa and a dozen packs of half priced seeds, including vegetables and wild flowers. All for just £60. They all gave me huge joy and as they begin to thrive and grow in the warmer months, will make my life and those of the local insect population, immeasurably better.

There’s just one small problem. Cash. Dosh. Readies. Call it what you want. I am currently a ‘resting’ journalist and copywriter, a gardener trying to drum up business during the wettest start to the year in over a century. The money I do have can’t really go on plants, especially as I have a monster mortgage, bills and, most importantly, young kids to provide for.

So the question is, do I really need more plants?

On one hand, yes. Buying plants makes me unaccountably happy in these bleak times.

On the other hand, I have heaps of seeds to grow food and perennials if I work carefully and do so properly. My mum is forever delivering pots from her own garden when she comes to visit. My wife directed me to a pair of box balls left dumped in a skip around the corner which were promptly carted home and potted up by the front door. The reeds around my new pond were split from a huge plant that the previous owners had left in the back garden.

And this is where plant support comes in. I need a group of people to talk me out of spending grocery funds on cheap pansies that don’t fit into the colour scheme I have planned for the new raised bed. And to tell them that they don’t need them either. That we have enough right now. Honest. I know of more than one gardener here on Substack who could use some of this group action. Join me, won’t you, in making sure I make do with what I have. It’s that or the three for a tenner sale at B&Q gets it.