Many moons ago, we opened the doors of Grow at Brogdale. When we first started out, Grow was a Garden Centre, selling everything from seeds to tools, from irrigation kits to roses. Over the years, the nature of the business changed and it became less of a garden centre and more of a plant centre. For the last ten years, the focus has been in particular, to become a specialist nursery, propagating the weird and wonderful, rare and heritage fruit varieties held in the National Fruit Collection so that the varieties are re-introduced and protected for future generations to enjoy.
As COVID hit a decision was made to move the propagation off site, to a nursery near the family home near Ashford in Kent. As any gardener knows, in summer in particular watering becomes an essential every day task, so this enabled all of the trees to be properly looked after, especially when travel and COVID restrictions came into force. The new nursery also allowed for expansion, as growing space was becoming an issue on the original site.
For the last three years the team have covered both sites, opening the customer centre on selected days each week and continuing their work at the nursery but alas, running two sites with a split team and trees at each does present its challenges! We decided to close our customer centre and moved out of Brogdale at the end of October, which would mean that all of our team (and trees of course!) would be at one destination. We firmly believe this will enable us to offer a much better service and to launch some exciting new products and services, something we have wanted to do for a long time. Today we continue to be as passionate as ever about our work and despite the changes at Brogdale we continue to work in partnership with the National Fruit Collection and Brogdale Collections.