THE ROSE...Plant of the month for July at St. Bridget Nurseries.

From Saturday 1st July 2006 until September, the St. Bridget Nurseries' rose field at Clyst St. Mary, Exeter will be open to the public. You can wander through thousands of roses growing in the field and choose from over 200 varieties for autumn dispatch. The field is open Monday - Saturday 9am to 5pm and Sundays 10.30am to 4pm. Access is from St. Bridget Nurseries Garden Centre, Sidmouth Road, Clyst St. Mary, Exeter, EX5 1AE.

In Scotland a bunch of white heather is lucky, in Wales heather is lucky in a Bridal Bouquet, in England...well it just looks pretty doesn't it? Lucky for those in Devon, heathers of all colours are now on special offer - just £9.50 for ten heathers in 9cm pots. Only at St. Bridget Nurseries Exeter (Heathers usually £1.40 each)!

Want to brighten your garden up on a (let's face it) not so summer like day? Well there's still time to plant some beautiful bedding plants. How about a nice window box or hanging basket?

St Bridget Nurseries have some beautiful geraniums on special offer - just £18.50 for 10 quality home-grown plants (normally £2.65 per plant).
If you don't want to do the planting yourself there's also some fantastic hanging baskets already planted!

Visit St. Bridget Nurseries Exeter today and brighten up your garden.

St Bridget Nurseries opened the gates to their nursery today in an exclusive charity event. 53 lucky individuals had purchased tickets to go on the special nursery tours where all money went to the charity Perennial (The Gardeners' Royal Benevolent Society). Two tours took place, one at 10.30am and one at 2pm and each lasted 2.5 hours.
The tours were conducted by the family owners (Mrs Janet Flinn Managing Director and Miss Tammy Flinn Marketing Manager) along with the Nursery Manager, Murray Richards.
First stop was the propagating unit were Gary, the propagation supervisor, showed the misting houses, young liner plants and grafting. The groups then visited the micro-propagation laboratory where thousands of micro sized plants are grown in sterilised conditions. Next stop was the herbaceous department where Phil the supervisor explained growing perennials from seeds, cuttings and dividing techniques, plus what compost mixes are used on the nursery.
A return stop to the greenhouses explained bedding plant production and David demonstrated how to plant a hanging basket. Preparation has also started for growing Christmas Poinsettias so this growing process was also explained.
Moving up the nursery into the container department, each tour group saw how St. Bridget Nurseries' compost is mixed aswell as the impressive potting operation. Many commented on the scale of the nursery which in total covers 100 acres or so but not all land is used for growing (some is set aside as grassland etc). Finally the tours continued to see the trees in the field before everyone headed off to the Plantsmans Cafe for a cup of tea!
To add to the enjoyment, each visitor also received a free goodie bag and the chance to buy some end of season cheap plants directly from the nursery.
Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the tours - the main question being will they be held again?!
This event raised £135.50 for Perennial.

Today is the start of St. Bridget Nurseries' Perennial week. 50 years ago Perennial - The Gardeners' Royal Benevolent Society- launched Gardeners' Sunday a special event where gardens across the country opened up to the public to raise awareness of the charity. St Bridget Nurseries took part and fifty years on we are still supporting the charity.
This week if you buy any Herbaceous Perennial from either the Old Rydon Lane or Clyst St. Mary garden centre, St. Bridget Nurseries will donate 10% of the value to Perennial. In addition tomorrow, the nursery in Old Rydon Lane will be opened to those who have purchased a nursery tour ticket for an exclusive chance to see behind the scenes of one of the UK's longest running plant nurseries.

Brighten up your garden with New Zealand Tea Tree (Leptospermum).
These beautiful plants come in various shades of pink. The bushy shrubs like acidic soil so plant in Ericaceous compost and they like to be placed in full sun or partial shade. Some varieties can grown quite tall (upto 6ft) but there are dwarf varieties that grow to 2ft.
To get best results, Leptospermums should be grown in a sheltered position and protected from frost.
There are some beautiful specimens in the St. Bridget Nurseries' garden centres at the moment and if you buy one (£6.99) you get one free!

We have a winner!
The weekend was very busy at our Clyst St. Mary garden centre. We held a special event - a Water Garden Weekend. The event kicked off on Saturday 17th June with special guest Amanda Patton. Amanda offered customers invaluable advice on garden design and we were quite in awe of her many talents! Amanda is not only a garden designer who has won an RHS Silver-gilt medal at Chelsea but she regularly presents on BBC Somerset Sound, contributes to Pond and Gardening magazine, illustrates in many of Alan Titchmarsh's and Ground Force's books PLUS she was RHS garden photographer of 2003!
Amanda was joined by Steve Wilson from Chy and Goi plants. Steve supplies our pond plants and offered expert advice to everyone.
On Sunday we welcomed Kate Sandel from Devon Wildlife Trust and Dr. Pete Falloon from the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. Kate offered everyone great advice on attracting wildlife into gardens and she planted a beautiful water barrel with wildlife attracting water plants - we even had a guest appearance from our resident frog shown above. The water barrel was a prize in our competition and the winner is Mrs Carpenter from Exeter who will be collecting her prize tomorrow.
St. Bridget Nurseries is pleased to be a Devon Wildlife Trust approved garden centre. Our staff understand how to create wildlife gardens and all our approved plants and products proudly display the Devon Wildlife Trust logo.
FINALLY, our great weekend finished with an excellent talk by Dr. Pete Falloon. Pete talked about how climate change is likely to impact our gardens here in the South West and it raised some very interesting questions. Fundamentally, plants are going to have to be robust enough to cope with hotter summers and warmer wetter winters. Pete finished his talk with showing some of the plant varieties that we can expect to see more and less of.
If you are interested in any of these topics then please get in touch.

Hello!

Well what a day to start a blog - it's dull, windy and chilly outside in Devon today luckily life at St. Bridget Nurseries is never dull!

Join me as I fill you in on news and day to day events here in Exeter.

At the moment we are busy preparing for the Charity Nursery Tours that are taking place on Tuesday 27th June. Lucky ticket holders will be taken on a tour of our nursery - one of the oldest in the UK - and see behind the scenes, from micro-propagation, to rose budding and container potting. The event is in aid of Perennial - The Gardeners' Royal Benevolent Society and so a minimum donation of £2 per ticket is requested.

Tickets are still available for the 10.30am tour and 2.00pm tour so if you are interested send a cheque donation (made payable to Perennial) along with your name and address to: Charity Nursery Tours, St. Bridget Nurseries, Old Rydon Lane, Exeter, Devon, EX2 7JY. We'll then send your tickets to you.

Hope to see you there,

Bye for now!