1993

After many happy years at Dorridge thoughts of retirement were beginning to enter my plans. There was no one in the family to hand the business over to and so I looked for another business I could join. It was getting harder to run a successful nursery just on chrysanthemum and dahlias, and the costs of breeding new varieties was far higher than the sales they bought in. Helped by Martin Rowe who came from a long established chrysanthemum family but was working as a management consultant at the time we eventually agreed to join Derek Jarman and Phil Insley at Proculture who had a large wholesale operation with catalogues of annuals and perennials, which were distributed to garden centres and super markets by their own transport company. This worked very well for several years and Woolmans Plants ran as the mail order side and Proculture as the garden centre side.

Sue myself and Iris in the office at Evesham. A really good team.

1996

In 1996 we bought Rileys a marvellous chrysanthemum firm from Woolley Moor in Derbyshire when the two brothers who ran it Chris and Keith Riley retired. They were very good growers and probably the best breeders of early exhibition blooms in the country. They raised all the Pennine family of garden sprays.

1997

Below is the first page of the 1997 Riley catalogue that I produced, with the letters of explanation.

2004

In 2004 there were cash flow problems at Proculture and Woolmans was sold to Eastfields at Terrington St. Clement near Kings Lynn. Peter McDermott had just taken it over and was trying to turn it from a reader offer business into the top company for young plants by mail order as well as doing reader offers, selling directly off the page, and selling on the Ideal World satellite channel. Martin Rowe who had by now gone back to the family business had also joined with him and bought all his stock there. The nursery was established at Rookery Farm, Joys Bank, Spalding where a very good grower and his wife David and Elaine Robinson were looking to expand outside farming. Peter and Martin eventually split off to expand the shopping channel side separately but the nursery is still expanding under David and Elaine, with new trial grounds and new greenhouses put up this spring.

2008

Jane and Elaine making a start on the trials at Joys Bank.

Even in June the despatch area was still busy.

Everyone is looking forward to the future wherever it takes us over the next 127 years, which is how long it is since my great grandfather Henry started in his back garden.

« Previous