Seed Propogator

I didn't know that the unheated seed propagator has been out for ages and is so cheap to buy. It's still the favourite propogator I have heard though and I can see why! This propagator is easy to use, is the perfect size for a windowsill and the seed propagator and represent value for money. My electricity bill is high enough as it is, so the fact that this unheated seed propogator retains its own heat without using electricity makes me very happy. I look forward to my mini peppers, cress and other vegetables. I have bought 7 of these seed propogators so I can line them up on my windowsill and enjoy free veg when the shoots pop through. Growing seeds is easy. See here for an idiots guide to growing seeds. And this is a great place to buy cheap vegetable seeds and bulbs.

Nicole Kidman in local garden centre

I wonder if celebrities such as nicole Kidman are keen gardeners aswell as shoppers.nicole Kidman was spotted here in her local garden centre in the build up to Christmas
www.poplartreegardencentre.co.uk


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Location:Uk

Snowy gardens

It's great to see snowfall in the gardens accross the uk.thank you for all of your photos.please remember to protect your garden from the snow as best you can and get all of your garden furniture,vulnerable pots and plants covered up.best of all.enjoy what could possible be a first White Christmas for years and look forward to doing a bit of sledging.get a good sledge from your garden centre ( www.poplartreegardencentre.co.uk ) and find a hill.look forward to getting back into the garden in the new year.there will be plenty to do.happy Christmas to gardeners accross the world.


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Is Green Tea Better Than Hoodia for Weight Loss?

It is not as though we are lacking in weight loss information. We have new weight loss aides and diets on a regular basis. The important thing to determine when you are choosing a weight loss aide such as green tea or hoodia is whether the product helps you overcome your weight loss issues. Let us look at green tea and hoodia and how the products help people lose weight.
How does green tea work to help people lose weight? It contains EGCG which provides energy, speeds metabolism and fat metabolism and blocks a bit of the starches you consume. It also has the ability to produce a sense of well-being. It contains zero calories, making it an excellent replacement for high calorie beverages.
Hoodia works to control your appetite because it contains p57. This compound appears as glucose in the body, or at least this is how your brain sees it. Because your brain triggers hunger when blood glucose levels drop, hoodia fools the brain and hunger is not triggered. You will not feel like eating as often.
So, will green tea or hoodia be the best choice for you? What are your weight loss dilemmas?
If your metabolism is naturally slow, green tea may give you the boost you need to facilitate quicker weight loss. You may also skip meals which lowers metabolism, and green tea will boost your metabolism to some extent. You should definitely try to eat several small portions of food throughout the day to increase the effect and drink green tea in between meals.
Do you need an energy boost so you are more likely to get to the gym? Green tea contains caffeine which will boost your energy levels, but it will not give you the jittery feeling you might get from coffee. Green tea contains L-carnitine, which naturally calms your mood. This might help with controlling emotional eating as well.
Most of all, if you tend to drink high calorie beverages in between meals, green tea might be the perfect replacement. Not only will it offer the above benefits and keep you hydrated, but it contains zero calories. You might just shave 300 or more calories off your daily intake by replacing sodas, juice or coffee drinks with green tea.
Do you eat a diet high in sugar? Refined carbs such as canned sauces, junk foods, pastas, breads and rice contain high amounts of sugar and starch. Overtime, your brain may trigger hunger on higher than normal blood glucose levels because it becomes used to these high sugar intakes and glucose spikes. You may even crave sweets. In this case, hoodia may be the right answer to your weight loss dilemma.
The bottom line is weight loss can only occur and last if you change your eating habits and lifestyle choices. Regular exercise coupled with a healthy meal plan will benefit you most. Depending on your individual weight loss issues, green tea or hoodia may or may not give you a boost and help you lose weight more quickly. So far. I am unconvinced.

Article sponsored by Poplar Tree Garden Centre

Save Money as UK Christmas shopping peaks online

Haven’t finished your Christmas shopping yet? If not, then you, like thousands of others, could be poised to flock to online shops next Monday in what could be the busiest online shopping day of the year.

'Cyber Monday' refers to the first Monday after 'Black Friday' - a day traditionally associated with the start of the Christmas shopping season in the USA - that is the Friday after Thanksgiving. 'Cyber Monday' falls on 30 November this year. The date has in recent years become a UK shopping phenomenon as online sales peak on a Monday two or three weeks before Christmas.

Wondering where to buy your gifts? Our biggest online shopping survey yet reveals the best shopping website.

Retail analysis suggests that shoppers spend pre-Christmas weekends browsing and buying on the high street, and then return to the office on the Monday morning to use price comparison sites to get the lowest prices or find items that were out-of-stock.

Shop around to save money online
This year, experts expect that shoppers will be keener than ever to find a bargain online in the face of the ongoing recession.

Feeling uninspired? If you’re looking for ideas for Christmas presents read our guide to the top Christmas present ideas

Popular gifts bought online include books, perfumes, CDs and toys which are typically at least 15% cheaper from online retailers than high street shops.

Sarah Kidner, editor of Which? Computing said: ‘You can definitely bag a bargain on the internet. However, we’d advise shoppers to look for hidden extras such as delivery charges before they buy. Shoppers should also check delivery times.’

Use the Which? guide to Christmas last order dates now to check which websites can deliver in time

Where to buy your Christmas presents
Our survey reveals the best online shops to buy from, including: John Lewis, BHS, and local garden centres

This article is sponsored by www.waterfeatureuk.co.uk Providing water features and fountains to UK gardens.

Experts offer Important tips for Christmas Shopping

CONSUMER rights experts have offered 12 handy tips for Paisley shoppers this Christmas.

The advice guide forms part of the national Know Your Consumer Rights campaign, which is a joint awareness raising initiative organised by the Department for Business, Consumer Direct, Consumer Focus and the Trading Standards Institute.

The 12 tips include checking the store’s returns policy, keeping receipts, remembering your rights, checking the guarantee and acting promptly if there is any problem with items you have bought.

Gordon Macdonald, manager of Consumer Direct Scotland, said: “This year, shoppers will be looking for value but will want to have the confidence that shops will respect their obligations and honour their promises.”

For further information on consumer rights, the 12 Christmas shopping tips and a chance to win £150 of shopping vouchers, visit the Consumer Direct website at www.consumerdirect.gov.uk

Once you have digested your rights, then there is no better way than to do your Christmas shopping than shopping online in the UK. Why get stuck in the crowds at places like the Trafford Centre, Oxford Street or The Metro Centre when its all at the touch of a button and delivered to your door the very next day. How did we cope without computers?

The Only way to do Christmas Shopping in The UK

Christmas is the best festival of the year and everyone looks forward to the day to rip open the presents and see what they’ve got. All people hope to get good presents that will be useful and Christmas shopping is a huge agenda as the holidays loom ahead. For those who enjoy shopping in general, Christmas shopping will be a lot of fun but tiresome. For people who are too busy and not that fond of shopping, it could be an ordeal. There is also the fact that all the stores would be filled with Christmas crowds and it is very probable that you might not find what you are looking for easily.

The best way to do your Christmas shopping in UK is to shop online. By shopping online, you can easily avoid the crowds. Each person likes different things and instead for going from store to store looking for just the right things to present to family, friends and relatives, you can shop with ease, comfortably in the confines of your home. All you need to have to complete your Christmas shopping is a few hours to find the best of things and a little patience to browse through prospective gifts.

There are also a few things that you should note before shopping online. You should make sure that you are shopping in safe stores and once you have started safe shopping you can plunge in and buy all the finest gifts. One of the best things about shopping online is that you have a lot of choices unlike going from store to yet another store where you would have to settle for an average gift. While others sweat it out trying to figure out the best gift, you can complete your Christmas shopping in UK in a couple of relaxing hours and watch your loved ones enjoy your cool gifts on Christmas.

Twilight saga christmas present

'Tis the season to be buying presents, and I've got a feeling many of us will be hoping for something vampire/werewolf related under our Christmas tree this year. If you have a Twihard in your life, or if indeed you're a fan of all things Twilight yourself, check out my gift ideas.

As well as all four books in the series, there are movie companions, a director's notebook, and a cute collection of journals. Music fans will love the soundtracks, and there's an official calendar for 2010 too. You can wear your affiliation with Team Edward and Team Jacob t-shirts, cuddle up to a branded pillow, or drink from a Bella Swan bottle. There are even action figures of the characters, plus replica pieces of jewellery!

Check out Poplar for other stocking fillers of a similar eye catching nature

Amy Whinehouse Christmas Shopping

Amy Winehouse got into the Holiday season spirit yesterday by stocking up on wrapping paper during her six-hour shopping spree in London's Selfridges, where she reportedly spent £18,000 on Christmas decorations! She's still wearing that engagement ring, but it's not just Blake Fielder-Civil Amy has her eye on. Amy has apparently fallen in love with Robert Pattinson after watching New Moon, and according to a friend she "loves the sexuality around vampires", so much so that she's planning to host a vampire party at her house for New Year’s Eve.

England 2018 World Cup Bid

It used to be said that what was good for General Motors would be good for America. This was not a statement of corporate arrogance but more of an observation that the world's largest company and the world's largest economy had mutual interests.

Until recently I thought a similar goose/gander connection existed between the Premier League and England's bid to stage the 2018 World Cup. A symbiotic win-win if ever there was one.

O to live in such simple times! These days, GM is more likely to bankrupt America than sustain it and the Premier League's commitment to the Football Association-led World Cup campaign is looking increasingly half-hearted.

That is a crying shame because England has everything it takes to stage a superb tournament, as will be demonstrated when the 15 cities hoping to host World Cup football in 2018 come to Wembley on Thursday to deliver their applications.

I had hoped to write only about that this week but to not mention Tuesday's shenanigans at bid HQ would be to ignore that big grey thing, with clumpy feet and a ridiculous schnozzle, lurking in the corner of the room.

I refuse to spend too long on the squabbles of English football's numerous chiefs, though, and not just because I wrote about them last week. The main reason is that they are depressingly trivial: x doesn't like y, y doesn't like z, nobody likes z, but nobody can really remember why.

In case you have no idea what I am on about, Sir Dave Richards, the chairman of the Premier League (among other titles), has chosen this week, the week the 2018 bid team hoped to talk about how many excellent potential venues this country has and the enormous passion for football we share, to resign from the bid's main board.

This week as opposed to two weeks ago, when that board was restructured to streamline the decision-making process, bring in the key powerbrokers and show a united front to the rest of the world, particularly the 24 members of Fifa's executive committee who will vote on which country gets the World Cup next December.

Richards must have missed that memo. Why else would such a loyal servant of English football destabilise an already wobbly situation a fortnight away from the bid's "first interview", the draw for the 2010 World Cup in Cape Town?

Let's hope the bid team insider I spoke to earlier this week is right when he asked me if I had met Richards. "No? Well, him leaving actually makes our job a lot easier," he said.

He's probably right. But then Karren Brady, one of board members who did step down at the correct time, is also probably right when she admitted the bid was beginning to look like a "shambles".

Ho hum, perhaps we did not like being frontrunners. Coming hard on the rails worked for London 2012, after all. Might be an idea to stop yanking on the reins now, though, hey?

So with that in mind, let's turn our attention to the pitches and places we hope will persuade Fifa's sphinx-like electorate to bring football back home.




As previously mentioned, 14 cities and Milton Keynes are throwing their hats into the ring, and those 15 places represent 22 different venues, although Liverpool's inclusion of Anfield alongside its replacement and Everton's Kirkby conundrum is really just to add something concrete to an otherwise computer-generated proposition.

Not that there's anything wrong with pictures. Munich's Allianz Arena was still an architect's dream when Germany won the right to stage the 2006 World Cup. It did not even open until the summer of 2005. A year later it would be hosting a World Cup semi-final.

Much the same can be said of South Africa's 10 locations, the majority of the 20 venues used during the 2002 World Cup and most of Italia 90's too.

Not having your World Cup venues built now can almost be an advantage (well, that's what Bristol, Liverpool, Nottingham and Plymouth are banking on). The drawings always look better than the finished article and you can trade on Fifa's desire to "leave something behind". It's not just the Olympic movement that bangs on about "legacy" nowadays.

There is, of course, a flipside to legacy, and it brings us back to that over-sized grey thing I failed to ignore earlier, but this time in white. Being able to say you have "left behind" a selection of state-of-the-art stadia and broken new territory for top-flight football is one thing, being accused of saddling mediocre clubs with grounds they cannot afford is another.

This was certainly my first thought when I considered the chances of Bristol, Milton Keynes and Plymouth, none of which struck me as hotbeds with pent-up demand for 45,000-seat sporting cathedrals. But then I spoke to them.

Bristol's bid is based on City's move to a new ground at Ashton Vale. A former council tip, it is now home to a herd of cows but should, in three years' time, be a football stadium with a capacity of 30,000 that can be taken to 44,000 in two 7,000-seat stages, should Premier League football arrive or otherwise.

There is similar ambition at Plymouth Argyle. The club's new owners are confident the team can progress to the Promised Land at last but Home Park's transformation into the "Wembley of the South West" will be financed by more than just football.

The region's natural beauty also features highly in the Plymouth plan. They are even promising to land 747s direct from Japan on the airstrips at Exeter and Newquay, if that is what it takes. I'm not sure about that but I think both Bristol and Plymouth have an excellent chance of making the cut when the final decision is announced on 16 December.

I would like to say the same about MK but I fear its quirky charms will be squeezed by Birmingham and London, particularly as the latter is putting forward four venues: the Emirates, Tottenham's new ground, Wembley and, slightly controversially, the 2012 stadium, running track and all.

I think four is greedy, no matter what London's bid leaders tell me about the city being of unique significance to a World Cup bid - the Emirates and Wembley, with the former getting a semi-final, seem nailed on, though.

Tougher choices exist elsewhere, particularly in the East Midlands, where some fear it might not be one from three but none. This seems unlikely but I have no idea if England's bid leaders will back the solid but unglamorous locations offered by Derby and Leicester or go with Nottingham's artist's impression of Forest's new home. It does look lovely but I would worry about its ever-changing location.

Artist's impression of the new stadium being planned by Nottingham Forest

Another battleground is Yorkshire. You would normally assume Leeds is a dead cert but then you remember the last time you went to Elland Road, try to work out who will actually pay for its upgrade (to achieve Fifa's 40,000-seat minimum you actually need about 44,000 seats because you lose that many to hospitality and the media) and wonder if you are not better off at Bramall Lane, with its history, new hotel and planning permission. Hull has a chance, too. Perhaps it will be two from three.

There were concerns in the North East that Newcastle-Gateshead and Sunderland were chasing just one place. I think both of these famous football centres, with their large, iconic grounds, will be fine.

So will Liverpool, despite current headaches, and Manchester, possibly for both Old Trafford - a certain semi-final venue - and the City of Manchester Stadium. Much has been made of Fifa's "rules" about only one city getting more than one venue in any bid. I do not think those rules are as firm as some believe. There is plenty of flexibility in them and we could end up with 18 venues in 14 cities or 12 in 11.

What is certain, however, is that a successful England bid in 2018 would be a success for the entire country. Take those recent PriceWaterhouseCoopers predictions of a £3.2bn bonanza for the country with a small pinch of salt but there will be significant rewards in terms of inward investment, tourism and global prestige.

Plymouth did its own research and thought the return on investment - £15m is the figure most of the cities will have to shell out - could be as much as £300m. Which is why so many cities have decided wading through forests of Fifa documentation - one bid leader told me he had spent the day finding a company director to initial each page of six 60-page contracts for just one of four practice pitches he must provide - is worth the trouble.

There are risks, of course, and Portsmouth's decision to pull out at the 11th hour demonstrates just how costly this process can be at a time of squeezed budgets (although there were some other factors at play there as well) but the earning capacity of the Premier League means the vast majority of infrastructure spending is taken care of - there will be no £9.3bn budget for this month of sport.

So let's stop bickering and start remembering why the England 2018 bid was the bookies' favourite from day one. It's the best bid, plain and simple.