About Us
We are a small plant nursery nestled in the rolling hills of Dorset, specialising in Herbs and an ever growing collection of Pelargoniums. We grow over 250 different varieties of herbs, ranging from culinary and medicinal, to salads and native wild flowers.We supply our customers with high quality, well established plants in various sizes and are always willing to help and advise where possible.
Our
Philosophy
Together we love the growing and nurturing of the plants, meeting customers and helping them create beautiful wildlife friendly gardens with interesting and useful plants. We love being able to share our passion and knowledge with our customers and take pleasure in hearing how their plants are doing and receiving more facts and growing tips in return.
We have just started selling online, but have been taking our plants to garden shows and markets for a number of years, click the link below or go to our events page to find us!
Who we are
We are a family of growers; Alan and Alison, their daughter Maxine and her husband Rob. We all work together in the greenhouse but each have our own area we are passionate about. Alan just thinks, lives and breathes plants, real green fingers! He's the boss!
Rob is in charge of taking cuttings, and is always keen to find new and unusual herbs such as Cuban oregano and Chilean guava. He also grows a selection of chillies, the hotter the better!
Max is hard to pry away from the Pelargoniums, and loves hunting around garden shows for curious new additions, with her recent find being the beautiful P.sidoides. Sempervivums (Houseleeks) are her other passion, these hardy little succulents are very addictive!
Ali is often found sowing seeds while listening to radio 4. She loves the wild flowers, medicinal herbs and talking!
Lily and Lyra the Border terriers entertain and welcome us home from a day at the market. There is also a resident group of frogs, toads, newts, wagtails and wrens who do us the great service of controlling insect numbers in the greenhouse.
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Alan and Alison started growing herbs in 2005 having previously supplied cut flowers to various large retail outlets, they wanted to get back to their roots of plant growing and dealing directly with customers.
Our nursery was started by Ali’s father Ron in 1955, growing salads and vegetables. Through the 60’s and 70’s the glasshouses were erected and tomatoes and natural season chrysanthemums were grown. In 1975 Alan joined the business having completed an HND in commercial horticulture and Glenholme became an all year round chrysanthemum nursery. The business expanded and had to move to a new site in 1991, leaving the greenhouses at Sandford Orcas available for other ventures. Then the herbs came along! Rob and Maxine joined the business in 2010.