As the year comes to an end with the night’s drawing in and our gardens turning into a more wintery landscape complete with frosty mornings and sparkling, iced structural plants, I find myself indoors carrying out our annual stocktake and reflecting on the achievements of the plant team here at Beth Chatto’s.
Once again, I am struck by just how much this small team of passionate plants people have produced, created, and excelled in providing plants, knowledge and experience to nursery, gardens and ultimately the customers who visit us or shop with us online.
For many people their focus would be on the over 150,000 plants that we have propagated and grown on in our peat-free compost, which spans over 2,000 different varieties. Or maybe it’s the 50 new varieties of plants we have introduced and made available this year.
However, for me this year has been about the continued work we as a team and as a company have put into reducing our impact on the environment thereby increasing our sustainability, as well as the trialling of different methods of working which have a less negative impact on the world in which we live.
From our continued testing of peat-free seed and cutting compost to obtain our goal of becoming completely peat-free, to our introduction of a biological pest control programme which has eliminated our need to use pesticides. Along with our increased use of cultural controls for weed management on the stock beds such as hand weeding, regular hoeing, the use of mulches to lock in moisture and thereby negating the need to water, which in conjunction with the covering of unused areas with recycled materials has allowed the soil to rest and rejuvenate in a natural way. Finally, after a myriad of process changes and experimentation we have switched over to a paperless picking and packing system for our online orders which has reduced our paper usage dramatically.
All in all, looking back over the past 12 months, I find the work we have done cheers me greatly and creates a sense of a year well spent. So, all that is left is to have a brief rest over this holiday period, to kick back and enjoy the fruits of our labours before it’s back to work in the new year to start building on the sterling work we have already achieved.
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