Frenetic February in the Nymans Nursery

Seedlings growing in the nursery

During the winter months you’ll find us engrossed in a range of tasks preparing for the season ahead. Gardener and Nursery Assistant, Andrew Seed, takes us through the jobs that lie ahead this spring.

Shrub propogation in practice
Shrub propogation in practice
Shrub propogation in practice

Purposeful Propagation

The Nymans Nursery serves three key purposes: propagating plants to plant out in the garden, propagating rarer plants to conserve them and propagating plants to sell in the shop as part of the ‘Nymans Collection'.

A key task for the year is sowing seeds for our famous summer borders. This started at the end of January and will continue to the end of March.  Already we have our first seedlings appearing  - Rudbeckia hirta ‘Cherry Brandy’, Antirrhinum majus ‘Madame Butterfly’ and Celosia ‘Fresh Look Orange’ - a welcome sign of sunnier times ahead.

Nursery Team

With 5,000 plants to grow for the summer borders alone, seeds need to be ordered and the nursery needs to be ready.  Additionally, in order to propagate more than 2,000 plants a year for our shop, pots and peat-free compost need to be ordered well in advance.

Never in the nursery
Never in the nursery
Never in the nursery

Marvellous Maintenance

All of this requires a well maintained nursery so that our plants thrive and are free from pests and diseases.  With this in mind, winter is the time that we clean and tidy the glasshouse – washing our pots and seed trays, relaying capillary matting in our bays and on our propagation benches, hoovering our floors and cleaning the glass of our glass house.  It's also a great time to re-organise our existing stock of plants to make sure we have plenty of space to accommodate newly propagated plants in the spring.

The gardens are filled with scent and colour in the summer
Colourful summer borders in the gardens at Nymans, West Sussex
The gardens are filled with scent and colour in the summer

The summer may still seem some time off, and there’s a lot of hard work until we see the results of our nursery work in the garden, but please do look out for our colourful summer borders this summer.