What was your best garden buy this year?

Mine was a free make over. I got rid of the leaky, unsightly log store and converted the old PVC coal bunker by making a large hole in the front. So much more practical than the log store was and FREE which is my favourite price and, I love a re cycle project.

Bought a meddlar tree, it has some fruit I will have to see how that grows on.

Hi loopyloo, I am well thank you.

A gardener for 3 hours every fortnight!!!
She does the heavy boring things & I get to enjoy doing the pretty bits.

Plastic cocktail glasses for our Pimms every night on the patio

Interestingly it was cosmos. A flower I had not particularly cared for but received them as freebies in a consignment. Duly planted and I have to say they have given me endless and constant pleasure this year. Will be my first purchase for next year without question

The best gardening gloves ever. Expensive but strong leather lined, warm & comfortable. My nails remain perfect!

My Best Buy was a swinging hammock !

Loopyloo
I lie in the south West and never lift my Glads. We have sandy soil so there is little water retention to freeze them in. They have been glorious this year. I leave Dahlias in provided I am not replanning the borders. We haven't really had a heavy frost for years now so fingers crossed! We had a late air frost earlier in the year when the Hydrangea was just unfurling and all the leaf buds turned black. Everyone said just leave it alone so I did and it recovered spectacularly well.

A plant I don't know the name of! Still flowering. A dark blue/purple and white flower. Have brought pot into conservatory as not sure if it is hardy.

Kim19 I think it must be a good year for Cosmos. From little seedlings mine have grown about 5ft tall. They’ve dwarfed and covered everything in the flower bed, and they’re still flowering.

Best garden buy? The services of a gardener!

I have a brilliantly named Grooving Tool from Poundshop.

I absolutely love it. Basically it's a wooden handle from which protrudes an iron spike, with a 90degree bend half way down. Perfect for getting weeds out of grooves.

And of course being a 60s chick... I love being in the groove again after all these years !

I bought a lobelia cardinalis which is about 2' tall, deep purple foliage and small red flowers, still a few remaining, also a red hot poker, dark orange (hard to find a red one but I plan to get one on line for next year) it produced ar least a dozen tall flowering stems three times during the summer although I lost a lot of the first ones because a slug or snail got to it first.

I got a tray of red geraniums from B&Q reduced to 50p. They are now in a window box and have flowered beautifully. Most of my plants come from the reduced section.

I bought a tomato plant in a lovely terracotta pot in Tesco's knocked down from £10 to £1.80 as it was a bit tired. Not only did it revive beautifully and produce masses of tomatoes but it turned out to have two herbs growing in the pot alongside the tomato and now the letter has finished they are going great guns. One is a rosemary plant and I am not sure what the other is but it is blue-ish and lavender-like but smells of curry.

My potatoes were brilliant this year and so are my new autumn fruiting raspberries which are still producing a bowl every couple of days. Best plants - three new fuschias, flowering beautifully.

A bottle of Tomato Feed. My fuschias, begonias etc. love it and are the biggest ever, and still going strong.

For the first time, I got some ready made mixtures of hanging basket plants and put them in tubs from the now defunct Homebase. They were and still are brilliant. Shall do the same next year - I think the replacement Homebase does much the same thing though haven't been there yet.

My best buy was a packet of Cosmos Daiseys from Wilko still flowering and about 4ft tall makes me smile everytime I see them

I always think of my grandmother when I see/hear about Cosmos. She was a young bride of 18 when she followed my GF to the goldfields f South Africa where he was an engineer. Apparently, each spring the veld round Jo'burg was covered in all colours of cosmos, preceded by lobelia!

As I was new to gardening and didn't know what I was doing I bought virtually everything in the pound shop! Have had fabulous crops of gooseberries, red and green, blackberries, raspberries, rhubarb and blackcurrants. Also I picked up 3 hebes and some heathers at 50p each from the 'dead' section at B&Q, all thriving despite my ignorance!!

Latter not letter!

A packet of climbing nasturtium seeds, still climbing and still flowering wherever they can. They make me smile everyday.

My absolute BEST garden buy this year is most definitely a season ticket to Green Island Gardens in Essex. I have enjoyed seeing some of the most magnificent Flora and Fauna during the different seasons. It is a complete joy to visit as the gardens are so lovely. Very, very, calming place.

When many plants go to sleep or are not their best this time of year the one shrub that will never let you down is the phormium a native of New Zealand
My favourite which I have in my garden is Maori Sunset and stands out like a beacon on dismal winter days. Phormiums need very little attention.