Planting Plugs

It just shows how lazy and greedy Thompson and Morgan are. The people you spoke to on the phone probably know nothing about gardening, they are there to make a sale. They might not even work for Thompson and Morgan. I know a lot of big firms now sub contact out phone sales to other companies who do it for them. Plugs are often produced by specialist companies who sell them on to other companies such as nurseries. The idea being that the nurseries pot them up and grow them on and sell them as a full size plant for sale.
Sounds to me as though Thompson and Morgan aare just buying in a job lot of plugs and selling them on to consumers. being plugs they are cheap to post. Sad that you have learnt a lesson the hard way. i never buy from T and M. even their seed is overpriced and not as good as they make out.
Incidentally with a small piece of land you were going about it in the right way. stick bulbs in and plant over them. The bulbs will grow through and then the dying foliage is covered by the summer perennials. Works well with daffodils, grape hyacinths and snowdrops. i have thousands of snowdrops in my garden but they are all covered over by other plants in summer.
If the perennials come to nothing go to a local nursery. I find the small family ones quite good. If they are good then the fact that you are beginners means they will give you good advice. They need to encourage beginners because being small they need repeat custom.

 

"i never buy from T and M. even their seed is overpriced and not as good as they make out"

I have had many failures and lots of poor results from T&M seeds and plants, and I'm constantly surprised by how well they are rated by many people on the forums. Maybe its just you and me Geoff ...

I periodically get suckered in by their special offers but they have always been "you get what you pay for it" IMHO. Two tree peonies this year, both carefully potted on and nurtured, one has died, the other one has done so little that it must have lived in its plastic bag for ages before being shipped ... I've got a couple of hundred plants I'm growing on in pots, none of the others seem to have succumbed to my uselessness :D

Howsoever, there are some seeds that I find hard to get easily elsewhere. Single-coloured (rather than mixed) Petunias, for example.

But, personally, I don't buy seed from T&M that I can get from other places.

The T&Ms Plugs, and quite a number of T&Ms other offers, and the packing that they arrives in, look very much like what is available van Meuwen - are the two companies related?