public events news

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!

It’s amazing to think another year has passed and never has the saying ‘how time flies’ been more relevant! This year has flown by! Looking back on 2012 it’s been a very difficult year in the horticultural world. The year started with great promise, with garden centre and garden designer sales very strong up to March. It was a month which saw temperatures in the mid-twenties and nursery staff in shorts and T-shirts. Our 30th anniversary season looked as though it was to be a vintage! All positivity was then dashed in April when local authorities up and down the country implemented hosepipe bans for domestic and at some point professional users. Two very dry years subsequently lead to these measures as reservoirs and aquifers began to run dangerously low. Then the irony!! No sooner had the hosepipe ban been put in place, the heavens opened and it didn’t (hasn’t!) stopped raining since! The phrase ‘driest drought on record’ started to be used in conversation! The combination of the ban and bad weather throughout what should have been our busiest months was disastrous! There was a mini revival with the Queens jubilee and of course the Olympics. Colour schemes were all the rage with red, white and blue plants selling like hot cakes! We end the year on an up-beat note, with very strong sales throughout the Autumn. We will take this positivity forward into 2013 and hope we all have a bumper year! We have expanded our business again this Winter and will be offering over 500 new plants next season and in greater numbers. Look out for our bumper new 2013 catalogue, being printed as we speak and available on request from January. We now have a new storage/dispatch depot, a new tunnel in the pipeline and more standing grounds. We are hosting a series of public open weekends again which proved very popular this year. Check our website for further details. We will also be running a series of events for the landscape/garden designer trade with special offers and discounts. So from us all at How Green Nursery, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and all the best for the coming season! ****Be sure to checkout our Christmas quiz! Download our current availability from this website and find it there. Put your brains to the test (or Google!), relax with a tipple of your choice and conquor the 70 questions posed. Prizes galore!!****