Introduction To Fir Trees Nursery

Dear friends and fellow Pelargonium lovers,

2007 a growing season dominated by rain, rain and more rain, in fact from June through to August we saw the wettest summer on record, however, despite the difficulties we encountered both here at the nursery with very high humidity and floods and at the flower shows where we were up to our ankles in mud for the most part, we have again had a wonderful season both medal wise and with the ever increasing demand for our plants. It is great to know that even when the weather conditions are challenging the great British  public will not be beaten and their enthusiasm for growing pelargoniums only gets stronger. Once the rains had subsided the plants exploded into a riot of colour, which lasted well into the autumn, and memories of disappointments in June and July soon faded.

One plant  that did enjoy the wet summer was our beloved Dieramas which flowered abundantly from June with the early varieties through to August giving us lots of seed in the autumn, we are intending to have some of our mixed hybrid seed packeted up to sell in 2008 .

We were stunned back in June at the BBC Gardeners World Live show to be awarded for the second year running Best in show in the floral marquee, also this was the third time we had been given this prestigious award, our first time was back in 2002 , I believe we are the only nursery to have received three best in show awards at this show. The decanter we received was different to last years, which was a nice surprise.

At all the other major flower shows we were again delighted to receive gold medals, the pressure is on in 2008 to keep the standard, which we will work hard to do.

A new venture for the nursery in 2008 is to offer a range of sundries, products that we use here on the nursery on a daily basis, things like pots, labels, canes, green twine, our black show bowls and our own compost mix which is one of the main ingredients in producing a strong healthy plant.

Along with the compost and other sundries we are having the feed we use packaged into small retail size boxes so that you can give your plants the same nutrients as we do. It is the combination of good compost and the correct nutrient liquid feed that produce strong free flowering plants with superior flower colour.

All these sundries can be found on our  ‘sundries section’.

As in 2007 we will be running events at the nursery  in May, July and August ( see details under ‘nursery events’), during all these events there will be yellow signs  put up on the roads close to the nursery and opposite the nursery entrance to help you find us easily. During the events you can see the day to day running of the nursery and ask as many questions as you want we will be happy to help.

We are giving R.H.S. events a break  for 2008 as we have been hosting them for a number of years but we will run them again in the future.

Any clubs or societies that would like to visit  are very welcome but  we can only give seated talks  in May between the Malvern  spring show and Gardening Scotland, otherwise the area where the talks are given is full of show plants. August is the only other month of the year when talks can be arranged.

We have eight brand new releases for 2008, these can only be obtained from ourselves either from the nursery, from flower shows or by mail order. As usual we have added to our list some plants that have been around a while but are new to us and have removed some altogether to make way for new improved varieties.

We are well on with all the propagating and the nursery is full of  lovely young plants for you to give a new  home to.

Lets hope that 2008 does not give us any extreme weather conditions to contend with and that everyones plants bloom and perform well.

We are all looking forward to a great 2008 and meeting you at the shows and in the nursery,

Happy growing

Helen and Mark