Stroud in Bloom

Cut flower bouquets, heady lavenders and cottage garden potted plants, it’s all growing at Stroud Farmers’ Market this season…

Hotch Potch Organics: a range of cut flower bouquets will be available at the market including traditional British favourites such as cornflowers, sweet Williams, snapdragons and foxgloves in June and July. Pastel hues continue into late summer along with the bold, punchy, colours of cosmos, sunflowers and rudbeckia in August. Hayley creates her bouquets using a variety of herbage and soft airy fillers for that naturalistic scented country-style bouquet.

Tortworth Plants: established in 2013 by keen horticulturists Tim Hancock and Rebecca Flint, Tortworth Plants grows a range of summer flowers and plants on the Tortworth Estate that will brighten up your borders. Choose the stunning Sanguisorba ‘Lilac Squirrel’ with its fluffy pink tails, sunny heleniums, striking nepeta for summer glory or the billowy heads of sedum for autumn colour.

Malcolm Allison Plants: over the next couple of months Malcolm will bring a range of summer annuals and perennials including pretty cleomes, bright arctotis, summer pinks, breezy linaria and thistle-like serratula. The plants are either grown from seed or from cuttings in polytunnels at his Tredington nursery, then grown on by Malcolm for the market. Because the nursery is in quite a bleak spot, the plants have to be a bit tough – ideal for replanting in your own garden.

Pat’s Plants: If typical cottage garden is the look you’re after, then visit Pat Puddenphatt’s weekly stall. Here you can find a range of hardy perennials that are in flower now and that will keep on flowering until the first frosts. These include asters, gaura, penstemon, sedums, salvia and a range of hardy bulbs. The plants can be bought ready to plant into the garden or planted up in unusual containers to make a lovely gift.

The Lavender Garden: this traditional nursery set within a Victorian kitchen garden specialises in lavender and buddleja and has a large selection of culinary herbs. The choice of lavenders is astounding, ranging from pale blue to deepest violet and even white. There’s the highly-scented Provence lavender, grosso, and the pretty butterfly flowers of the papillon to the midnight blue stunner, the Hidcote.

Ascott Gardens: home-grown perennial, annual and biennial plants are available from this smallholding, as well as seasonal cut flowers.

Julian Harvard: from his Tewkesbury-based smallholding, Julian specialises in seasonal cut flowers. Favourites include sweet peas in billowing bunches of mixed or single colours with their intense scent, as well as more unusual varieties. After a break over summer, Julian will be back in late August with a new selection of autumn flowers.