1967-1992
1967
When I finished at Solihull School I went to Wye College near Ashford in Kent to get a degree in Horticulture. In the first summer I went to work with Geo. Ball in Chicago and was lucky enough to stay with Len Shoesmith who was breeding mums for them. I then went with Len on a tour of nurseries they supplied down the west coast of America from Seattle to San Francisco and ended up staying with George Ball in the hills just outside San Francisco. I felt very lucky.
Soon though I was back at home and when I finished the degree it was soon pointed out to me that it was time I put something back into the firm.
1973
Below is a picture of John Woolman and his wife Edith celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary.
Soon after on the 9th October my grandfather died. It was decided that I would go and live at Dorridge to look after my grandmother. We would then sell the Shirley Nursery were we had been for 67 years and enlarge the small one at Dorridge. All went well till the oil price tripled and the three day week began, but eventually we had just over an acre of new glass from Frampton Ferguson divided into 5 bays. This replaced the 47 different sized greenhouses we left at the old site.
Broadacre House and gardens at the top with the new nursery nearly completed.
1974
Here are the full time staff who moved from Shirley in 1974 to make it a success.
In new clean glass the stock grew really well since light is usually the limiting factor in an English winter. We had cold stores and a health unit and laboratory and the nursery was expanding again.
Here I was about to put some cuttings in the new cold stores. Everyone had more hair then!
We were sending plants all over the world and I remember several years putting some stools in an old tomato box with chicken wire over the top and sending them out by ship to the Governor’s residence on the Falkland Isles. Father Jack Woolman was retired now and on one of his many trips to the Himalayas he told how he went in to The Royal Botanical Garden in Kathmandu and saw some nice chrysanthemums and went over to look at them. Seeing his interest one of the growers came over and asked if he new of Woolmans were the plants had been bought from!
