public events

Autumnal showcase at Penshurst Craft Fair

10/09/2013

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!

07/05/2013

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!

07/01/2013

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.

The How Green Team members in front of one of the vans

Reflections on the Year that Was

19/12/2012

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!!****

Great Grasses at our Autumnal Nursery talk

23/10/2012

Last week we welcomed back the Fordcombe Amateur Gardening Society to the nursery. The end of October can be a little tricky for seasonal interest, but with our grasses at their peak we made the most of them! Grasses can be so versatile and can be used in many aspects and situations. There are grasses for full sun and arid conditions, there are grasses for shade, for moist conditions (and marginal) and there are perennial and annual grasses. Plant them in the border on mass within a naturalistic scheme, or maybe a few under the base of a tree. They also work well in containers and even hanging baskets. We discussed the subject in depth and looked through the grasses on display, followed by a question and answer session. If this all sounds like hard work, we all retired to the Summer house and enjoyed a fantastic spread of home-made cakes and tea! See you next year!

Final chance to have a nose around this year

12/09/2012

To celebrate our 30th anniversary year as a business, we have been opening our gates to the public for the first time in nearly 20 years! We have had two weekends so far, one in the Spring and one in the Summer. This weekend represents the final installment for this year. We open 9am – 5pm on both Saturday 15th & Sunday 16th. You will get to see the nursery with plenty of Autumn interest, as well as some really interesting plants we have grown for the 2013 season. Highlight will include late flowering perennials and a large selection of grasses. Also available to buy will be alpines, herbs, Autumn vegetable plants, tropical plants, succulents and patio plants. See how a commercial nursery ticks and how we produce hundreds of thousands of plants a year. Come meet the famous Tonto the bonkers nursery dog, who has made several appearances on these pages this year!

We hope for the return of our PUBLIC OPEN WEEKENDS in 2021

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

Unfortunately, due to the current Coronavirus pandemic, we were not able to hold these events in 2020 but hope they will return in some form for 2021. For instance, we held a pop-up at the nursery during September which proved very popular.

Normally, on our PUBLIC OPEN DAYS all are welcome to view and purchase plants and enjoy tea and cake in the garden.

We also 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.

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Growing and supplying plants for garden designers, landscapers and retailers since 1982