Golden Acres Blog

Despite the cold I have been out and about visiting nurseries to find the best plant stock for our centres. We try and source stock locally or from British growers whenever we can and if possible grown ‘cold’. This means the stock is kept outside or in unheated polytunnels to keep it hardy and ready to face the real world outside in the garden. Despite the weather some of these little toughies are doing their best to nose through and enjoy what sunshine they can get, on one nursery the foxgloves were even doing their best to flower! I know things are starting to move when the first Paeonies start to make an appearance, the first shoots are always the most amazing deep red colour and sure enough they’re just starting to tip through the soil so we’ll be getting some of those in soon.

Box Topiary, looking verrry cold. A pot and a trim and they're ready to go

Occasionally though we have to turn to our European friends for stock such as houseplants and topiary that we don’t grow as well over here. I was in Belgium last week looking at what they have to offer. The Belgians offer a good range of cold grown hardy stock and topiary. We visited several nurseries growing box topiary – It was incredible to see them en masse in fields surrounded by snow – I know if they can cope with that and temperatures lower then -13c they’ll do fine over here. We also saw many Azaleas and Rhododendrons and the best Bay trees I have seen by far. Interestingly China has picked up on the Belgian quality and is starting to buy there in quantity so I got my orders in quick! We have picked some of the Azaleas and Box plants for some of our offers coming up in a few weeks time.

Our Supplier looking warm in the Bay Tree Nursery. Those are the biggest Bays I've ever seen!