A MESSAGE FROM THE PLANT MAN

As I write this at the end of December 2023, I reflect on another successful year at The Plant Man. After a rotten start with so many dead plants caused by a horrendously cold December 2022, the season ended on a high note.

I compare in my head, all the years we’ve had here, since my late partner, Anna and I, bought the place back in 2001. She’s been gone now for 11 years and the nursery simply wouldn’t be there without her. It wouldn’t exist.

We bought the property to build a nursery, in those dangerous days when you could get a big mortgage, even when common sense said you shouldn’t. We ignored that advice and went for it, with very little money to build a business after all the other bills. Brave or stupid, I’m not sure….

Thanks to a small loan from the Bank, we got stuck in. I kept my full time job in a Garden Centre, Anna continued working as a nurse, and on our days off we got started on creating a new business.

Things were hard. I had (have) a stubborn streak to have my own business, as, well, I really didn’t like being told what to do by somebody else!

So we had the house at Braybrooke, anda good chunk of land. On a slope. In a frost pocket. No pathways, no water or electricity supply to the fields. The worst possible place to set up a nursery!

People tried to put us off. Friends in the industry at the time, said the location wouldn’t work. We were too far off the beaten track and not on a main road. Well, I took that as even more of a challenge and we were resolute. This WAS going to work.

We opened on weekends only, just Anna, her daughter Jodie helping, and myself of course.

Soon went to 5 days a week, weekdays only, and 3 months closure January - March, re-opening April. That gave us chance to have 3 months to just keep building.

Things got a little busier with more customers, so we moved to 7 days a week, opening at weekends, with 6 weeks closure in the Winter. We kept building.

The first few years were tough. We couldn’t pay people to build the nursery for us, so we did it ourselves, bit by bit. If you look to your feet next time you visit, you’ll see that the floor is a tapestry of bits of concrete, not nice big areas all done at once. We couldn’t afford it!

One polytunnel became two, three, four. We tried growing things ourselves even in the early days. I knew we could grow a good plant for our customers. We still do.

We created our own little growing area which is long gone now (it used to be where our trees are). Bought cheap polytunnels wherever I could find them, and built one or two a year.

Word grew. New people came to visit from the local area, and whatever we’d created, we were quietly confident it was going to work. Still working a full time job for a Garden Centre in Leicester, and my 2 days off at home, thoughts slowly moved towards having to go full time and giving up my ‘proper’ job.

A few of you may remember Sue and Matt, my first two employees. Sue tragically passed away a few years ago and I still miss her larger than life personality. She was from Zimbabwe and she was ace. And Matt now enjoys his time with his wife Paula (who also worked here) in Scotland on the shores of Loch Lomond.

Business grew, bit by bit. I took the plunge and went full time, giving up my nice secure job. It was scary, but that stubborn streak worked. We worked long hours, got one or two more staff, started local deliveries and did them in the evenings after we closed every day.

The time we closed each Winter got less and less, to the present day when we now just shut for a few days over Christmas.

And my brother Gary joined me around 10 years ago, leaving a very well paid job to try something new; the business continued to gain momentum.

We decided to have a go with Christmas trees, and advised to have no more than 50 in our first year. We ended up selling just under 200, and that’s become a big part of life here in December.

Our little growing area was suddenly far too small, so my top field (‘we’ll never need the top field’, I promised Anna, and my sister had her sights on a donkey sanctuary up there….) turned into another major project, with 8 tunnels and lots of outdoor growing beds; this is the bit not many of you see, and I still think it’s the bit that really makes The Plant Man so different to all those other Garden Centres out there.

Little by little, bit by bit, and against the advice of lots of people, I’m very proud to say ‘we did it’. A few of our existing staff have been there for some of the journey, and I’m eternally grateful that they’ve been around to help. Tracy and Rachel have both been with us a long time now, they’ll remember a lot of this (along with the ups and downs of working with annoyingly forgetful, often disorganised and not-so-relaxed stress-bunnies). Glenn joined us when we really needed to strengthen our team with more plant experience. Guys, thanks for everything x

A huge thanks to my amazing friend Jane, who hung up her secateurs last year and helped me at the nursery by volunteering her time freely for so many years. The only person in my life, who INSISTED I took one evening off a week and not do evening deliveries, so I could go to her house and share a meal with her. Which we still do to this day. Thank you Jane. You saved me from totally losing the plot many times x

And thankyou to each and every one of the people we’ve employed over the years. I can’t begin to list everyone, and I can tell you that nobody has ever been given an easy life working at The Plant Man. We’ve always asked a lot from our team. I like to think it’s prepared them (particularly the youngsters who’ve never had a job before) for what ‘hard work’ is, and how important it is to give great customer service. It’s been lovely over the years, to watch 16 year olds grow up so much over a couple of seasons, and turn into such great young people.

And to the exisiting team, thanks a million. Rachel and Claudia, Glenn and Archie, Tracy and our sister Lisa, not to forget our delivery man, Ross. It’s a small team and it’s been a tough one at times for everybody. Thank you all x

IT’S NEARLY 2024….

2023 has seen our best ever year, following what many in the industry would call the ‘perfect’ season. An awful Winter with despicable temperatures in December ‘22 which killed so many plants in your gardens and our nursery. So for all the wrong reasons, we saw so many people flocking to us to replenish their own gardens.

And an at-times dreary wet Spring, Summer and Autumn where we never saw those dreaded high thirties we all remembered from the year before. Lots of rain on and off, no hosepipe bans, a lovely bit of momentum for gardeners who just didn’t stop buying and planting plants from us!

A new tree planting service which has seen lots of new customers buying trees, as we take all the hard work out of it and do the job from start to finish.

And new customers, still almost daily, who’ve never been to see us before. Told about us by friends and family, perhaps seen one of our Facebook posts. We’re still flabbergasted that after all these years, people are still bowled over when they come through the gate and get to find a ‘proper’ nursery…the biggest compliment to us is that people leave happy.

And at the same time, week after week, month after month, a Plant Area that looked simply superb, day in and day out. Lots of lovely plants from our own nursery, and lots of beautiful produce bought in every week from our little network of UK and European growers. And credit for that goes 100% to the brilliant team we have. All to give us our…

OLD FASHIONED NURSERY!

We’re dead proud of that, you know. And our attitude to selling plants won’t ever change. We won’t be offering a cafe. We won’t be selling jumpers, or books. We won’t clip your dog. You won’t get a head massage.

We really don’t like to be called a ‘Garden Centre’….that’s not what we are. We’re a nursery, a little rough round the edges perhaps, but as long as we can continue to offer you great plants, at good prices, and we can give you good service….well, those rough edges don’t really matter quite so much.

My biggest thanks have to go, however, to my brother, Gary. His commitment over the years has made a monumental difference to the nursery, and enabled me until recently, to concentrate on our own production with Tracy, while he runs everything else…..

And he’s the reason that as of 2024, after 20 years of creating ‘my perfect nursery’ from scratch and something I’m extremely proud of, I’m taking a step back and exploring a few new ideas within horticulture, while Gary continues to run the business.

I’ll still be mulling around because I still live here on site. But it won’t be quite so often you see me; it’ll be Gary, Glenn and Archie giving you great advice, Tracy growing some extraordinary stock, and Rachel and Claudia relieving you of your wages at the tills. With Ross dropping your compost over.

Oh, and if you want a tree planting, it’ll still be me doing that most of the time (tea, milk & no sugar thanks). And I still host the odd evening groups at the nursery in high season, email if interested….

That said, it’s always a pleasure for me to say hello to customers old and new, so I hope I’ll see you around in 2024.

You can create what you think will be a good business, but at the end of the day it really comes down to you lovely lot out there, coming to see us and choosing us over so many other great nurseries and Garden Centres.

So to you all, I say a huge thank you too x

Ian Colledge

ian@theplantman.net

I’m very lucky. I knew what I wanted to do when I was 12 or 13, even if I got endless stick from my brother (!!!)I never wanted to do anything else. With the help of my late partner Anna, we started something through pure hard work and determination, and not taking no for an answer.

Life isn’t easy for people these days, God knows it’s bloody hard. A couple of people have asked me over the years about how the Plant Man started, and whether we just bought the nursery as it is today. Nothing could be further from the truth. And when I’m asked about how it all began, I always think of the following quote I heard a million years ago….

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” (Henry Ford)

Lots of truth in that. We wanted our own place, something we could be proud of, and we worked really hard to make it happen.

Our parents taught us about hard work. Plain and simple. My two sisters, my brother, and me. They taught us the basics of money…don’t spend what you don’t have. And when mega-giant Gardens Centres like Dobbies, report losses of £130 millon this year, I think they were always bang on.

Thank you Mum and Dad x