Gardeners' World Live 2024: Win a pair of tickets for Sunday 16 June, plus discount code

The competition has now closed, thank you to everyone who entered.

The discount code GARDENS15 is available to use until it expires at 23:59 on 6 June 2024 - for full details see the ‘Use my discount code’ section in this post.

Once again I’m happy to pair up with the team at BBC Gardeners’ World Live for this competition where you can enter to win a pair of standard adult tickets to BBC Gardeners’ World Live at Birmingham NEC. The tickets offered as the prize for this competition are valid for Sunday 16 June, 9am entry with a RRP of £56.00. For details of how to enter please see the ‘How to enter’ section further on in this post. I also have a discount code which you can use when purchasing tickets, the code is shown in the ‘Use my discount code’ section also further on in this post.

As you know I love going to Gardeners’ World Live so it’s great to be able my readers the opportunity to go too. Below I’ve included what you can see at this year’s show, but if you want to see more from my visits to previous year’s shows then be sure to take a look at my posts - and come back here after the show, as I’ll be adding to that collection of articles.

What to see at this year’s show

• BBC Gardeners’ World presenter Adam Frost’s headline Show Garden, The Chef’s Table - a large walk-through garden full of vibrant home-grown produce, a rustic outdoor cooking and eating space. Adam will also host a daily programme of ‘plot-to-plate’ themed conversations and demos with chefs from the BBC Good Food Show including James Martin and Michel Roux.

• New for this year, and designed to inspire town and city dwellers is the Urban Gardening space, sponsored by Blue Diamond Garden Centre group - expect to see ideas, plants and products for creative containers, brilliant balconies and wonderful window boxes.

• On the Urban Gardening Stage Ade Sellars (aka The Good Life Gardener) will host daily sessions with a line-up of expert urban gardeners, and there’ll be a Showcase Garden showdown between the UK’s top young landscaping teams with both teams competing to build the perfect city garden designed by Cherry Carmen.

• The show is also the new home for the British Orchid Council’s annual International Orchid Show which will surely be the highlight of the Floral Marquee with displays by more than 20 specialist orchid growers and societies.

• Also in the Floral Marquee will be an expanded Hot Off The Potting Bench where you can see brand new plants and varieties close up. There will be Plant Expert Workshops and the Plant Expert advice desk, or you can soak up the floral advice from BBC Gardeners’ World presenters, plant specialists and special guests on the Let’s Talk Plants stage.

• Another new addition for this year is the Get Growing Stage - an informal, drop in space dedicated to the joy of home growing, as well as a daily programme of top tips and growing advice and alfresco cooking demonstrations.

• The highlights of the show for me are always the Show Gardens and this year they will be showcasing back garden designs inspired by the theme ‘The Good Life’. The Showcase and Feature Gardens are always a place to pick up ideas and inspirations for gardens sized more similarly to our own gardens, and the Beautiful Borders really are just beautiful and show how much can be done with a small space - their theme this year is ‘Share my Space’.

• You can catch up with the presenters from Gardeners’ Wold at the BBC Gardeners’ World Live Theatre who will be ‘in conversation’ with Nicki Chapman and swapping summer garden tips with the BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine editors.

• If you’re a keen indoor gardener then head for the House Plant Hub, which also includes a House Plant Market and Stage.

• There’s plants for sale too in the Floral Marquee, Plant Village, House Plant Market and new Urban Gardens zone, so make sure you have plenty of scope to carry your plants home!

• And the Health for Life Wheelbarrow Competition also returns, where children from local schools and nurseries create wheelbarrow planters with a ‘food and climate change’ theme which visitors can vote on.

• And finally, your tickets also include entry to the BBC Good Food Show Summer with demonstrations, theatres, stages and talks, book signing, tastings and workshops, street food and plenty of food and drink to taste and buy.

Phew. It’s a great day, but one that’s often full on - so make sure you’re ready for it. I love it!

How to enter

To enter to win a pair of standard adult tickets valid for Sunday 16 June 9am entry, you need to leave a comment on this blog post telling me why you want to attend Gardeners’ World Live, then click on the widget below and complete your entry - you can get more entries by interacting on social media.

Win a pair of standard adult tickets for Gardeners’ World Live at Birmingham NEC Sunday 16 June 9am entry

A winner will be chosen and contacted by email on Wednesday 15 May.

Use my discount code

Use the discount code* GARDENS20 for 20% off standard adult/concession entry tickets (excluding Saturday) - this code expires on 9 May 2024. From 10 May use the discount code* GARDENS15 for 15% off standard adult/concession entry tickets (excluding Saturday) - this code expires 6 June 2024.

*Discounts valid on adult/concession standard entry tickets on Sunday 16 June only. Not valid on Saturday, VIP, 2-day tickets, added extras or with any other offer. 20% discount offer starts on 1 February and ends at 23:59 on 9 May 2024, 15% discount offer starts on 10 May and ends at 23:59 on 6 June 2024. £3.95 transaction fee per e-ticket order. Details correct at time of publication.

Hooks with a difference

As I’ve said in previous posts, the obvious thing about moving into a new build is that you’re the first people to live there - and that means things like shelves and hooks just aren’t there. And you don’t realise just how much we take these kind of things for granted, until they’re not there.

I know that not having hooks isn’t the biggest issue in the world, but a hook-less cloakroom wasn’t going to be viable long-term so a solution - and hooks - needed to be found. It wasn’t right at the top of our list, especially as the cloakroom was initially a handy store for a few moving boxes that we hadn’t quite worked out where their contents should go just yet, but with friends and family visiting we wanted to be able to have somewhere to hang their coats, and also we wanted somewhere for ours too.

MOH was keen to just get something on the wall, but I know that game - once there’s something up that you may have compromised on, then it’s up and in use and it could be a while (if ever) before it’s addressed ‘properly’.

But I wasn’t keen on any of the hooks, or racks of hooks he kept showing me, and nor could I find the right hooks. So we remained hook-less for quite a while.

The issue for me was I’d seen some lovely hooks, that were quite distinct but couldn’t remember where I’d seen them, and so until I’d found them again I couldn’t move forward. Luckily my Google-search skills are quite advanced and I did find them again on the Nkuku site - along with many more decorative hooks (I’ve just looked again whilst writing this post and let’s just say it’s a dangerous place for my purse).

By this time of course MOH was ‘just buy the hooks’. So that’s exactly what I did, well after a bit of measuring, checking where pipes and cables might or might not be, and some soul searching on the price, but fortuitously all this meant I managed to time my order with their sale.

And the hooks arrived, three of them. Each with three moveable hooks, which required three screws for each wall mount. MOH regretted his stance when he realised that meant eighteen holes to make, but thankfully he agrees it was worth the while - and of course the first thing hung on the hooks was a cycling helmet!

And since then a lot more coats, fleeces hats and scarves. It’s quickly become a very usable storage space as we also store (amongst other things) our garden seat cushions, the internet router, umbrellas, our current go to everyday shoes - and our bottle bag for our empties ahead of recycling in here.

Though I’m hopeful that soon we’ll be able to put our winter coats away!

My garden in March

In last month’s update from my garden there was the promise of colour, but it hadn’t yet materialised - well in March, it materialised with daffodils, blossom and the tulips making their mark. That wasn’t all though, and thankfully looking back you can see how much the garden has transformed in a month, with Spring taking its first tentative steps - thankfully!

These three terracotta pots have kept me busy over the month, with MOH quipping at one point that our daffodils probably had the most attention than any anywhere else, which is actually a fair comment. These egg yolk yellow daffodils were the first to flower, not surprisingly as they were the ones that got into earth in the autumn. The errant or curly wurly ones that I didn’t plant until the new year flowered much later, but they did flower and they brought their pale gentleness to the garden as they did.

You’ll have seen this photo before I’m sure, and I make no apologies for sharing it again as I really like it and it was the first time on ‘daffodil watch’ that I had flowers, the blue skies were an absolute plus too.

It was good to see the crab apple tree spring back into life too. I’d pruned it at the end of the summer last year, to reduce its size and give it a better shape and over the winter it acquired a bird feeder. Unfortunately the only birds that were interested were a couple of crows who were doing their utmost to get to the fatballs it holds. Not wanting to encourage the crows into my crab apples (there’s a lot of them here, with nests in the taller trees a few gardens away) I moved the bird feeder out of the tree and hung it on the wall, as we’ve nowhere else for it at the moment.

Watching the crows and their confusion on their next visit made me feel bad (briefly), but also they were quite comedic too - they haven’t found where I’ve hung it temporarily yet either, though we do still have a crow or two patrolling the grass every now and then.

In terms of blossom our small nectarine tree really put on a show. This plant came from dad and it’s our first year of seeing what it gets up to, and so far it’s going well! I repotted it in the autumn and as we want to eventually grow it in front of the wall on a more permanent basis, I’d pruned it so there was a central stem and two branches on each side with the intention of tying it to a cane support. I didn’t get around to that before winter, which given the wind and storms was probably a good thing, and its rewarded me with some early and very pretty blossom - I’m keen to see what it gets up to over the next few months now.

My tulips were also showing signs of promise early in the month, and are clearly happy in their new location - which while windy is also protected and of course they get the heat from the garage wall behind them. I love how they’re so very green when they’re at this stage.

Here’s the errant daffodils, some were quite tall in the end, but some of the others not so much!

They are much more delicate in their colouring though, and while they’re lovely I much prefer the egg yolk yellow sort!

Throughout the month the acer which we brought with us has come back to life too. It started with small buds, which gradually turned into these folded up leaves. It’s great to have the colour back by our back (front) door - and I think there’s more leaves than I remember in previous years.

Although I’d been keeping an eye on the tulips, they did take me by surprise and were suddenly in full flower. I think they too are enjoying the more open, and sunnier, garden and have come much earlier than they would usually in our previous garden. That gave me a headache though as my patio pots were still full of daffodils, but I didn’t want to miss out on these either.

I soon solved that conundrum by moving the tulips onto the patio and arranging, and rearranging, the daffodil pots in the large border so that we could see them from the house. I also learnt that our soil is saturated, I bought some snowdrops in the green and needed to plant them, but also needed to mix in some compost to the soil so that they stood a chance. Knowing this I was glad I put the daffodils in pots, but now I’m thinking I’ll keep them in pots and half dig them into the border - especially as know I’ve worked out the optimum spot for them all.

So a burst of colour this month - and aren’t the bold tulips against the lime green of the euphorbia just divine? I’m thinking I should pot up some of that euphorbia so I can bring that into the patio pots as a foil for the tulips next year - I know they spread when planted in borders, so maybe this could be a way to keep them more contained!

Other than these pots, we’ve still not been gardening proper this month thanks mostly to the weather - let’s hope April brings better weather and more opportunities to spend time outside in our new garden.