Collections

Lists that answer a question people actually ask, and that the catalogue holds enough data to answer properly.

Why there are so few of these

A structured catalogue can generate thousands of these lists automatically, and almost all of them would be thin, near-identical and useless. GrowingHQ publishes a collection only when it names a question somebody asks, returns enough plants to be worth reading, does not return most of the catalogue, and rests on fields that are actually populated. Of 41 candidates considered, 37 currently pass. The coverage page shows the rest with the reason and what would unblock them.

Soft fruitSoft fruit is cheaper, faster and almost all self-fertile, which makes it a different proposition from tree fruit rather than a smaller version of it. Height is the honest proxy: these are the fruit that stay within reach.12 plants Fruit for a small gardenTwo constraints that go together in a small garden and are usually addressed separately: it has to stay small, and there is no room for a second plant to pollinate it.8 plants What actually grows well without soilSoilless systems suit fast leafy crops and long-season fruiting crops, and are a poor use of equipment for anything grown for a swollen root. This is the honest short list rather than the equipment-supplier one — set to the strict verdict, because at the inclusive setting it returns forty-six crops of which most say 'works if', and a page promising what grows WELL cannot be built out of qualified yeses. The eighty-five assessments behind it were authored in Sprint 22 and most of them say no.14 plants Vegetables for a shallow containerA window box, a trough on a wall or a grow bag on a balcony gives about twenty centimetres of soil, and that single number decides more than anything else about the plant. Leaves, salads and the shallow-rooted alliums are completely unbothered by it; anything grown for a long root or a big fruiting frame is not, and no amount of feeding compensates. This is the list that separates them, and it is deliberately narrower than the general container question — which returned nine vegetables in ten and told nobody anything.14 plants Herbs that keep producing on a windowsillSprint 16 established that the honest answer for most windowsill herbs is 'until October', and Sprint 22 made it a field. Filtering on whether the herb will actually grow indoors returns thirty-two of thirty-three, because almost anything survives a windowsill; filtering on whether it keeps PRODUCING returns twenty-one, and the twelve it excludes are the ones people buy most. A supermarket basil is fifteen seedlings in one plug and dies on schedule, coriander bolts from a single check, and neither is a failure of care. This is that distinction as a list.21 plants What actually needs a greenhouseThe candidate this collection replaces asked which crops will grow under glass, and Sprint 22 answered it: ninety-nine of a hundred and two, which is worth nothing to somebody deciding what to put in a six-by-eight greenhouse in March. The question with an answer is which crops a greenhouse makes POSSIBLE rather than merely comfortable, and there are eleven — the aubergines, melons and peppers that will not ripen outdoors in most British summers, and the tender tropical herbs that a British winter kills outright. Everything else in the catalogue is choosing to be there.11 plants What a polytunnel earns its keep forSprint 22 assessed both structures separately expecting them to come out the same, and they did not — in one specific and useful way. Nothing in this catalogue is UNLOCKED by a polytunnel. Polythene loses overnight heat that glass holds, so the crops living at the edge of their heat requirement ripen later and less reliably under a tunnel than under glass, and every one of them drops from 'only possible here' to 'better here'. What a tunnel does instead, and does more cheaply than any greenhouse, is buy weeks at both ends of the season across a very wide range of crops. Forty-eight of them, which is what the structure is actually for.48 plants Vegetables for a shady gardenA north-facing or overlooked garden is extremely common and most growing advice quietly assumes full sun. The division that matters is what the crop is grown FOR: leaves and stems do well enough on four hours of sun, while anything that has to ripen a fruit or swell a root mostly does not, which is why this list is largely salad and brassicas and contains almost no tomatoes.26 plants Herbs for shadeThe Mediterranean herbs want sun and the soft-leaved ones tolerate shade, so this list splits the herb catalogue along a line that matters.14 plants Herbs for a small potEvery herb will live in a container and that is why the phrase is useless. The question with an answer is which ones are happy in a SMALL one — a windowsill pot, a 15 cm terracotta, the compartments of a herb planter — because the ones that are not do not die dramatically. They sulk: half the growth, early bolting, a woody unproductive middle, and a gardener who concludes they cannot grow herbs. Bay and rosemary are shrubs and want a tub; fennel and lovage put down a taproot longer than most pots are deep. These are the ones that genuinely do not mind.14 plants Herbs worth a greenhouseA greenhouse changes which herbs are possible rather than merely easier — basil, Thai basil, lemongrass, curry leaf and Vietnamese coriander are the ones it unlocks, and a further group of soft annuals gains real weeks at either end. Set to include both, because for herbs the extension is genuinely worth the bench: an autumn sowing of chervil or coriander under cover crops when nothing outdoors will. What it excludes is the group most often put under glass by mistake — rosemary, sage, thyme and lavender, which are hardy, and which die of winter damp under cover far more often than they die of cold outside.14 plants Crops for small spacesA balcony or doorstep is defined by height and rooting depth rather than by area, which is why the query is expressed that way.36 plants Crops for shallow containersRooting depth is the constraint that decides whether a trough works, and it is the one figure most container advice omits.29 plants Straightforward crops to start withDifficulty is a GrowingHQ editorial judgement rather than a sourced fact, so this list is our opinion about which crops forgive a beginner's mistakes — useful, and worth knowing it is a judgement.59 plants Vegetables for heavy clayClay is the soil British gardeners complain about most and the most fertile ground in the country once it is worked. The useful list is not 'what tolerates clay' but 'what is actually better on clay than on the loam everybody envies' — brassicas, beans and blackcurrants among them.18 plants Crops for chalky, alkaline soilChalk rules some things out absolutely — blueberries cannot be grown in the ground on it — and grows the Mediterranean herbs better than anywhere else. It is the soil where the difference between 'not preferred' and 'impossible' matters most, and where most advice conflates them.14 plants Crops for light sandy soilSand is the easiest soil to work and the hardest to keep anything alive in through a dry July. The list worth having is the one that separates crops limited by the watering can from crops that genuinely prefer sharp drainage.40 plants Crops for shallow soil over rockWhere the spade stops at twenty centimetres, rooting depth decides everything and nothing else much matters. Shallow-rooted crops are entirely unaffected, which is a more encouraging answer than most people expect.37 plants Crops for a new-build gardenCompacted subsoil under a thin layer of imported topsoil is the commonest garden soil in new housing and the least written about. The constraint is compaction rather than texture, which changes both the crop list and the remedy. Set to `tolerated` rather than the `preferred` every other soil list uses, and the exception is the point: made ground is a DAMAGED soil rather than a soil type, so 'which crops do better here than elsewhere' describes exactly one crop and nothing useful. Nothing prefers compacted subsoil. What a reader standing on it needs is the list that copes, and then the soil page, which is about fixing the ground rather than working round it.24 plants Houseplants for low lightThe most-asked houseplant question there is, and the one most often answered dishonestly — a great many plants sold as low-light merely tolerate it, and decline slowly rather than obviously. GrowingHQ records tolerance separately from preference, so this list can say which genuinely do not mind.6 plants Houseplants listed as non-toxic to cats and dogsOne of the commonest reasons somebody rejects a plant, and an area where the internet is least reliable: 'toxic to cats' is applied indiscriminately to plants ranging from mildly irritant to genuinely dangerous, and 'pet-safe' is applied to anything nobody has got round to assessing. Every plant on this list is named on an animal poison-control centre's non-toxic list for both species. A plant nobody has assessed is not here, however benign it is generally assumed to be — three houseplants in the catalogue are in exactly that position and are listed on the page with the reason.11 plants Plants for dry shadeThe hardest position in a garden — under a mature tree, or against a north wall with a roof overhang — and the one most planting advice quietly ignores by recommending things that need moisture.46 plants Shrubs for a shady borderThe north-facing border is the commonest difficult position in a British garden and the one most planting advice quietly ignores. The useful list is the shrubs that actually flower or hold good foliage in shade rather than the ones that merely survive there — sarcococca, mahonia and fatsia do the first, and a great many popular shrubs do neither.13 plants Shrubs for dry shadeDry shade under an established tree or against a north wall with an overhang is the hardest position a garden has, because the two constraints are usually treated separately and the plants that answer one rarely answer the other. This is the short honest list of shrubs that take both.7 plants Garden plants for heavy clayThe soil British gardeners complain about most, and the most fertile ground in the country once it is worked. As with the vegetable list, the question worth answering is not what tolerates clay but what is actually BETTER on it than on the loam everybody envies.6 plants Evergreen shrubs for winter structureA garden made entirely of herbaceous perennials disappears in November, and the shrubs that hold their leaves are what stop it. Sprint 18 authored the foliage field and could not query it, so this list was filtered on lifecycle instead — which returned every woody plant in the catalogue, because a shrub is a perennial whether or not it has any leaves on it in January. Sprint 19 made persistence queryable and the question now selects on the fact it is actually about.16 plants Bulbs you plant once and leaveThe division the packet never makes. Daffodils, snowdrops and crocuses are planted once and increase on their own; gladioli and dahlias are a yearly lift-and-store commitment, and somebody who does not know the difference loses them in the first hard winter and concludes they are bad at gardening. Filtered on `hardyInGround` from Sprint 19 rather than on general frost exposure, which was answering a different question about the top growth.12 plants Evergreen climbersAlmost always bought to hide something — a chain-link fence, a neighbour's extension, a bin store — which is a job a deciduous climber does for seven months of the year and abandons for the five when the garden is most exposed. The list is short and that is the finding: most of the climbers people plant for screening are deciduous.7 plants Climbers for a north-facing wallThe wall that gets no direct sun from October to March is where a climber is most wanted and least likely to succeed, and it is where most of the ones on sale will not flower. Half the climbers in this catalogue tolerate it and half do not, which is unusually clean for a garden question — and the six that do include the two best screening plants there are. The filter is the light level rather than the compass bearing, because that is what the data records: a north wall is the commonest way a British garden produces shade at a vertical surface, and an east wall under a neighbour's extension produces the same thing.6 plants Ferns for dry shadeThe sentence 'ferns like damp shade' is repeated everywhere and is false of the ferns most worth planting under a hedge. Dry shade beneath an established tree or against an overhung north wall is the position gardeners struggle with most, and the hard shield fern, the male ferns and the wall-dwelling spleenwort are among the small number of genuinely good answers to it. Every plant on this list also happens to be evergreen or semi-evergreen, which is not a coincidence: leathery fronds are how a fern survives a dry summer in shade.6 plants Shrubs for pots and containersSet to `suitable` rather than the inclusive default, because a page titled 'shrubs for containers' is asking which are good permanent pot plants and not which will tolerate a season in one. The strict setting is also what makes the list select: at the inclusive setting it returns most of the shrubs in the catalogue, which tells a reader standing in front of an empty pot nothing at all.17 plants Evergreen shrubs for a potA container is almost always in the most looked-at part of a garden — beside a door, on a step, at the corner of a patio — and unlike a shrub in a border it has nothing around it to carry the winter. That is what makes foliage persistence a harder constraint here than anywhere else in planting: a deciduous shrub in a pot is bare stems in an expensive object at eye level from November to April. These ten are assessed as good permanent pot plants at the strict setting AND hold their leaves, which is a smaller list than either question alone and the one somebody buying a pot actually wants.10 plants Trees for a large containerDeliberately set to the most inclusive bar, because for trees the honest answer is usually 'for a while'. A birch or an amelanchier in a big pot is a good plant for several years and a declining one after that, and the value of the page is in saying so rather than in pretending the pot is permanent.6 plants Bulbs for potsThe one group where a container is often BETTER than the ground rather than a compromise: the drainage suits them, the display can be moved to where it is seen in March and moved away while the foliage dies down, and squirrels are easier to defeat on a hard surface.12 plants Bulbs that need lifting over winterThe other half of 'bulbs you plant once', and the half people find out about by losing the plant. Authored expecting to fail on too-few-results — the catalogue holds two — and recorded so the gap is a named work item rather than a silence.6 plants Evergreen shrubs for shadeThe two hardest constraints in ornamental planting, together, and the combination a north-facing boundary actually presents. Sarcococca, mahonia, skimmia and fatsia are the plants that answer it and are not what most people are sold.10 plants Perennials that look after themselvesPlant once, water rarely, and do not replace annually. Three filters that each narrow substantially, which is what makes this a genuinely selective list rather than a synonym for 'plants'.96 plants