From our Instagram

[instagram-feed num=3 includewords=”#howgreenpublicopenweekend” includewords=”#publicopenweekend”]

Public News & Events

The last hoorah of the year

Last weekend we opened our gates to the public for our Autumn extravaganza! We only host these special days three times a year and our September event is a perfect showcase for late season colour! It never ceases to amaze us at the popularity of these days and the attendance was again phenomenal! An ever faithful band of regulars and many new faces were welcomed to the nursery by our staff and Tonto & Ted the nursery dogs! We decorated our 1972 VW camper van with an array of grasses and late flowering perennials and displayed a selection of our many Heucheras. Planting combinations and ideas could be taken from them. Hazel was once again on hand to give valuable advice – she’s not actually a member of staff, but a very good trade customer of ours and willingly helps out at our open days! She’s gaining quite a following! We salute you Hazel! With plant buying satisfied, customers then headed off to our garden and summer house to indulge in tea drinking and cake eating! Trouble is, you didn’t leave much left for us! Thank you all for your amazing support during 2014 and see you at our 2015 events! (dates to appear here soon). We aren’t going into hibernation just yet, so check out our website & Facebook site for nursery news, gossip, new plants and our legendary Christmas quiz!

Our Penshurst show garden with a twist

This weekend saw our annual September outing to the Penshurst Craft Fair held at Penshurst Place. Ourselves, along with our good friends Chilstone from Tunbridge Wells join forces to create a mini show garden and stand. Having attended the show for the last five years, twice a year, it’s always difficult to come up with a fresh idea for a garden! This time round, we gave the garden a bit of a twist and made an old 1972 VW camper van the main centrepiece! The stunning camper has been fully restored to it’s original glory, with shiny new paint job and re-conditioned engine. The tax exempt classic is not used as  a show vehicle, but for its intended purpose for camping weekends and trips to Devon & Cornwall. With this in mind, we thought we’d put ‘Doona’ the van to work over the weekend. With some wispy grasses and colourful late season perennials, we put a smile on the show-goers faces. The sun shone down on us and plant sales were great – roll on May for the next show garden! What to do next???”!

The How Green team sitting around the dining room table having their staff Christmas meal

Merry Christmas from all at How Green Nursery!

Wishing all our customers old and new a very merry Christmas and best wishes for the year ahead! We find ourselves a week away from Christmas day and we’re left wondering, where on earth did that year go?! Here at How Green we are busily beavering away like Santa’s elves to prepare Christmas potted arrangements. We use high quality wicker trugs and a choice of bulbs including Hyacinths and Narcissus, all then lovingly decorated with natural moss and a Christmas tag. (See our plant of the week pictures). We also have a special treat for you! Open our availability lists opposite and you’ll find the How Green Nursery Christmas quiz! 100 green fingered questions to get sunk into over the festive period. Put your brain cells to the test and send us back your answers via email. There will be prizes for those with the most correct answers! We take a look back at the 2013 season and reflect on what has been a rollercoaster of a year! It started disastrously for us and everyone connected with the industry. A prolonged Winter with snow, ice and sub-zero temperatures made for less than favourable gardening and growing conditions. March and April, which should be two of our busiest months were a right-off . Coming off the back of a very difficult 2012 (where it didn’t stop raining), the situation was bleak. Spring Then in April came our first of three public open weekends. Oh how we rejoiced! The weather behaved and gardeners gave us renewed confidence by coming to the nursery in their masses! Plants were sold by the boot full and the tea and cake flowed! This was then followed by a calm spell with sun and warmth. Our stock which at one point was six weeks behind in growth caught up and it was like flicking a light switch! This was extra relief with How Green growing for a major show garden at Chelsea Flower Show for the first time! Our good friend Roger Platt’s M&G sponsored garden deservedly won gold, and we breathed a sigh of relief! Garden centres and garden designers stepped up through the gears and suddenly the 2013 season was underway! Summer The fantastic weather then carried on into early Summer and further open days, both trade and public proved a hit. Our show gardens and plant stand at Penshurst Place were warmly (hotly!) received. The long Summer days continued and got the nation out into their gardens. The smell of BBQ’s hung in the air and pots and borders that had not been tended since the Summer before, were revitalised! Again, we grew for two gardens at Hampton Court Flower Show. Autumn Then into Autumn. Late September saw our most successful Trade Open Day to date. Gardeners, designers and garden centres took advantage of our special offers on the day and the networking opportunities were phenominal! Business cards and numbers were exchanged and our cake and biscuit tin took a real battering! Usually a time for us to grow for the following year, but something amazing happened! Our loyal and ever increasing band of garden designers took on the challenge of some major projects. This in turn left considerable holes in our stock leading to our best Autumn sales ever! Winter And so to Winter! A time to reflect and do maintenance round the nursery. As you can see from our last post, we are in the throws of constructing a new office and sales area. Also in the pipeline, a new Lavender tunnel. Our 2014 catalogue is being lovingly put together by the amazing Natalie Seal at Ginger & Fig in Tunbridge Wells. She’s a whizzo graphic designer and website designer, specialising in anything horticultural. The catalogue has over 300 new plants on offer to you next season, so our stock of over 4500 plants looks very exciting indeed! Other plans for the 2014 season include more Public and Trade Open Days (dates TBA – check website for details). We are also in the process of organising some guest speakers here at the nursery. These may be evening/weekend events, or we might tie them in with our open days. We already have talks and nursery tours booked in from numerous gardening clubs and societies. Contact us for further details. Literally hot off the press, we have been asked to grow for a Chelsea garden again next year! If we say who, we may have to kill you – details nearer the time!! All that’s left for us to say here at How Green is Merry Christmas and a very Happy and Prosperous New Year to you all! We leave you with the scene of Tonto the nursery dog festooned with a cracker hat at our staff Christmas party last year!

Autumnal showcase at Penshurst Craft Fair

Last weekend saw How Green make a rare public outing with our plants! We only attend three shows per year, two of them being at Penshurst Place for their Spring and then Autumn craft fairs. We have a strong working relationship that goes back nearly thirty years with Penshurst Place, as we stock their plant stand on a weekly basis and hire our topiary for weddings in the great Barons Hall. Coupled with the venue only ten minutes from the nursery, it’s natural for us to make the annual pilgrimage! We arrived on Thursday in blistering heat, exceeding 30oC, to build a mini show garden in conjunction with Chilstone from Fordcombe. To celebrate Chilstone’s 60th anniversary, we created a diamond shaped garden around one of their fantastic fountains that acted as the centrepiece. A local copper artist also showcased his art with a wonderful contemporary garden chair and…………..a bath! We here at How Green have never been asked to base a show garden around a bath, but there’s a first time for everything! The planting plan used a variety of grasses and late flowering perennials to create a naturalistic, prairie style of planting. We used plenty of Echinaceas, Agastaches, Salvias and Nepeta. Within minutes of setting up the garden, it was awash with bees, hoverflies and butterflies – a truly magnificent sight! We also attended with our own plant stand, with lots of our new plants for 2014 on sale. Our display looked wonderful with our Heucheras, displaying no less than 46 different varieties! The old saying ‘ how different one day from the next can be’ couldn’t be more apt at the show! Suffering from sunburn and dehydration from setting up the garden,  Friday slapped us in the face with……Autumn! Rain, wind and only 16oC! thankfully the weather improved on Saturday and sales were great. Sunday was again changeable, but it was great to see so many enthusiastic gardeners out there, eager to get their gardens into shape for Autumn! This week sees a busy time at the nursery with a trade open day on Friday 13th (hope it’s not a bad omen! – see side bar) and then our last public open weekend of the year. We open our gates on Saturday 14th & Sunday 15th and a warm welcome to all to browse our strictly wholesale only nursery. Our nursery is at capacity and full to bursting with plants for the 2014 season. Many new additions on offer. If plant shopping gets all to much for you, relax in our Summer house with an array of tasty home made cakes and teas!

Public Open Day Sunny Success!

How Green Nursery opened its doors to the public for the first time this year and how amazingly wonderful it was! From the popularity of last years series of open weekends, there was some apprehension this time round, due to the awful Spring weather. As if by magic, the sun shone bright and triggered gardeners to come out of hiding! How Green was packed for two days, full of eager horticulturists, desperate to get gardening after twelve months of dreadful weather! Visitors were met by enthusiastic staff and wagging tails from the nursery dogs! Trolleys and wheel-barrows were filled to over flowing, with cars leaving fully laden. After a hard stint of plant shopping, visitors could relax in the summerhouse and take in some fine home made cakes and tea! Roll on the next open days in June!

Happy New Year!

What a wonderful Christmas we all had here at How Green! We kicked off the holiday in great style with our annual Christmas party. The dining room was turned into a Winter wonderland, decorated beautifully and Christmas carols filled the air! As is the tradition here at the nursery, there is no turkey with all the trimmings, not even a Christmas pud! This is through choice however and our loyal workforce unanimously vote in each year without fail……. fish & chips!!! Christmas crackers, hats and jokes aside, it’s then off to the very welcoming Henry 8th pub in Hever for liquid refreshment! To nurse the sore heads, staff are given plenty of time off over the festive period. We’re now all refreshed and ready to crack on with the coming season. We’re working flat-out, potting up perennials and seed sowing ready in time for Spring. This year our stock range has again increased by over 400 plants, bringing to total nearly 4000 different plants. These can all be seen in our new 2013 catalogue available on request right now. Sales have started positively with our quality potted bulbs leaving to garden centres in our area. The photo below shows a great order heading out to our good friends at Coolings Garden Centre at Knockholt.

We hope our PUBLIC OPEN WEEKENDS will be back in 2022

We are a wholesale nursery, growing and supplying plants to the horticultural professions. However, we also hold a series of open weekends, three times a year, where we open to the general public. These events are usually in April, June and September. 

Unfortunately, due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we were not able to hold these events in 2020/21, but instead held a limited series of pop-up events at the nursery which proved very popular. We hope they will return in some form during 2022.

We also normally host regular talks and group visits throughout the year, but again these have been put on hold for the meantime.

To keep up with the latest info on the nursery, please check our Public News page or subscribe to our Public Events Newsletter. 

Thank you, from the team at How Green.

Public Events Newsletter

To be kept informed of nursery events especially for the public please subscribe here. We promise not to bombard you with emails.

From our Instagram

[instagram-feed num=3 includewords=”#howgreenplantoftheweek” feedid=”plant-of-the-week”]

Subscribe

Sign up here to be kept informed of our Public Open Weekends and other special events.

As we only send out the occasional email, we won’t bombard you. We pledge to keep your info safe and never sell it to third parties.

Look forward to seeing you at our events.