Newsletter

Here at Greenmile we are well into the summer work on the trees. The newly planted stock is looking good, and there is also some decent growth on the older trees.

We are kept busy flat out at the moment, the main jobs in the nursery being training young growth, watering, feeding, and controlling pests and diseases and weeds. It may not sound much, but we are pretty rushed. Training itself involves caning each tree, tying in to the cane, trimming and pruning to shape, and then more tying and shaping as the tree grows.

There is also the container unit to look after, where we have had some good sales over the past few weeks. It is pleasing to see that our efforts to offer a really wide range of varieties at bigger sizes has paid off. We have seen lots of private customers, looking for something special for domestic gardens, as well as landscapers, local authority buyers, and people representing community bodies.

The container unit is looking great. There are some really good early summer-flowering trees: cherries, crab apples, thorns, rowans, whitebeams are all in good shape. There’s also a great choice of conifers, and our renowned range of trained trees, standard ‘pom-pom’ shapes for that special urn on the terrace, spirals and so on. This year we have expanded our range of fruit trees in containers, which have been so popular, most are now old. We have plenty growing in the field for November though!

The weather has been a challenge, as usual. The hot dry spells have meant that watering is critical for trees to flourish, a point that we emphasise to our customers: a good soaking every few days is essential for a newly planted tree.

Greenmile stock has been used in several show gardens so far this year. Our trees have featured at Malvern Flower Show, and Chelsea, and at BBC Gardeners’ World. So far the Medal Table for our customers is showing 1 Silver at Malvern, Silver at Chelsea, and Silver at BBC Gardeners’ World. Going for Gold next year!

We ourselves will be having a stand at Four Oaks Show, THE trade show for the nursery industry. If you’re there, come along and say hello: there’s always a nice atmosphere at Four Oaks, and a chance to put faces to names on the phone and email.