3 little bonsai Ficus Ginseng in a trough

Sometimes I even surprise myself with the funky looking plant displays I supply to clients.

This little (it's only 50cm long) trough was designed for a car showroom in Christchurch who wanted something long and low to sit on their customer handover coffee table.

As they already have a number of bonsai Ficus Ginseng (very similar looking to the ones in another showroom I blogged about recently) around the place, I thought I'd continue the theme with this trough.

It's like an avenue in trees in miniature! I also rather like the little gnarled trunks. They already get my vote as I have two of these exact trees in bowls from the same Cubis pot range (but in metallic lipstick red) in my living room at home.

What's more (and the client won't like me sharing this) it's really good value. We have a large stock of 2nd hand ones of these 'Cubis' cabinet troughs so I am able to sell these outright for £40 + VAT, or rent them (with our maintenance service included) for as little as £6.50 +VAT per month. Bargain!

If you'd like one, get in touch.

Jonathan

My lovely Boston Ferns (now on sale in the shop!)

I've blogged about my massive order of plants in January which were for a short hire.


The Boston Ferns are becoming a bit of a fixture in the greenhouse; I haven't quite got to the stage of trying to keep them, but it'll come.


But what I have noticed is that they seem to have got accustomed to their environment (or maybe it's the lengthening daylight hours?) and have all started putting out vivid green new growth, straight upwards. En masse it's a delightful sight, as this picture shows.


On a related note, we recently took over a large contract in Havant. When we take over the maintenance on existing office plants we often find things have been done a little differently; in this case one of the plants was the largest Boston Fern I've ever seen indoors. It must be 1m across and hangs about 75cm down from the top of the tall pot it's in. Can anyone beat that? If so, tell me!


Edit to add that a selection of these are now on sale on the Wimborne branch of Stewarts Garden Centre as a special offer.

Jonathan

Spring Hanging Baskets

Look at these lovely spring hanging baskets. In the rather unlovely surroundings of the back of my van after I'd picked them up from our hanging basket supplier a mile down the road towards Wimborne.

While most people change their hanging baskets in May/June and September/October, we have a number of customers that have an extra spring set in late February/early March, or have them instead of the winter ones, as they can start to look a bit tired by the spring.

They are planted much the same as winter baskets but with more flowering/bulbs and less herbs.

These ones were meade to order for a health club in Berkshire and were £24 + VAT each -including delivery and installation. Bargain!

Contact me if you want something similar.

Jonathan

2nd hand pots: it's an ill wind...

...that blows no one any good. Read on...

As explained in detail elsewhere on our website, we have a large stock of second hand plant containers, as a byproduct of the fact that many of our customers rent their pots from us, so we get the pots back if the rental deal ends or is renewed with new pots.

In a recent post I showed you our pot stock in its lovely tidy new home.

Sometimes we get plants in pots back from a contract in such good condition (often better than new if the plants have developed nicely) that we can't bear to dispose of them, and we hold on to them in the hope that a new owner will be found for them as they are.

Sadly, a chain of car dealers we look after went out of business recently and we got two sets of magnificent plants back, some which had only recently been installed, some though were over five years old. Car showrooms are very light, so plants tend to do very well in them (with our maintenance, anyway!).

I am happy to report that we have found homes for almost all of them, including the whole set of nearly new displays - like the one illustrated - which have not only gone back in to a car dealer, but in my opinion a much nicer one - much more my kind of cars. Meanwhile, the new clients benefit from much better rental terms than they would have done with brand new plants and pots.

It also has to be said that we have installed so many of these bonsai Ficus Ginsengs in car showrooms that it's verging on a Stewarts cliche (or a 'house style', at the very least). But you must admit a bonsai tree in a nice plain tall pot like this just looks right in this kind of location.

Now a picture of what all those plants were for

Well, half of it anyway - the other half being beyond the stairs.

This is what the huge quantity of plants in my previous post were obtained for: ~60ft of stage front to be turned into a mass of greenery for a dance championship in Bournemouth.

I can't take all the credit: my floristry-trained boss Rebecca took over the laying out, and I happily let her. Though I did choose the plant species - how many different ones can the indoor plant fans spot in this pic? I believe there's 18.

As I mentioned, we also provided all the fresh flowers.

As of a couple of hours ago, all these plants (400 small plants and 60 specimens) are back in my greenhouse, which is now rather full.

Oh, and it's our quarterly stocktake at the end of the month, so by filling my greenhouse to this extent, I've rather created a rod for my own back, haven't I?

So... if anyone wants a lot of indoor plants in hurry, I'm your man! Any offer considered!

Jonathan

I got a bit carried away ordering plants

Every other Monday I send an email to our Dutch plant supplier telling them what I want delivering later that week. Usually I get between three and six trolleys of plants but this week I ordered eight trolleys packed to the top with lovely bushy plants.

So many plants that we've completely run out of bench space for them. The reason for this extravagance? Next week we are providing a huge (and very lush) temporary display in front of the stage at an event at a conference centre in Bournemouth. 60 feet of plants 5 foot deep takes a lot of stock. All the plants you can see here are for this job.

We are also supplying the fresh flowers for the same event.

I haven't quite worked out what I'll do with them all afterwards; most will get fed into the stock for replacements as part of our maintenance service but some are plants we rarely use, so I'm thinking of holding a Stewarts Interior Landscaping 'garage sale' in the early spring. Watch this space....

Jonathan

A new home for our old pots

As a purveyor of plant displays on a rental basis (and also a bunch of compulsive hoarders), we have a large stock of ex-rental pots in storage. I would estimate 4-500 in total!

There is a purpose to this hoarding, as they can be resprayed and reused if a new order for the same pot comes in, as they are as good as new when resprayed.

However, the bit of polytunnel in which they were stored was required by our sister nursery to expand their growing capacity, so we were asked to move all our pots to a new one they find less conducive to growing plants. All fine, except it took two of us a couple of days in all to move them all over (as the two polytunnels were a van drive apart).

This did provide me a golden opportunity to pander to my OCD by putting all the different pot ranges in nice neat lines. There are many different types and sizes of pot, some more or less indistinguishable; I hope I've rendered myself redundancy-proof by being the only person at Stewarts that can tell them all apart.

I was trying to instruct my helper Claire on the subtleties of design that differentiate a Kubis from a Cubis, a Smooth Cubis (old), a Smooth Cubis (new), or indeed a Bajazi, all of which look very similar to the layman. But I think she just thought I was making it up.

Then I started explaining the differences between Penangs, Malays, Zeniths and Bedouins, which also all look the same. I'm surprised she didn't leave me to move them on my own...

Jonathan

A dog is for Christmas...

Now the Christmas Tree rush is over, I thought I'd share this funny little incident that occurred when we were erecting the last tree at a retirement home in Bournemouth.

Being a friendly sort of retirement home
they have a cat and a dog for the residents' pleasure. You would expect the dog to be a peaceable kind of animal under the circumstances, and this first photo seems to show we got off to a good start....





...but before long he wanted to start playing tug.

With my hand.

Luckily as the owner of a Bulldog I am used to teeth marks on my hands...



...but the final straw was when he decided to steal one of Debra's gloves.

Debra is not only quite fond of her gloves, but she's also really not a dog person.

As any student of body language will be able to tell from this picture.



Odd isn't it? Every year we sit down before the busy Christmas Tree period and try and make contingencies for what might happen (rush of late orders/bad weather/etc.), but "spaniel stealing glove" didn't feature in that list.

Christmas trees all delivered

Another Christmas Tree delivery period successfully completed. Having expected (what with the recession and all) that we would be having a quiet year, we didn't expect to have one of our busiest years yet. Seventy trees, and almost all delivered by Debra the Christmas co-ordinator and me!

Here's some statistics:

- A total of 520 feet in height of trees

- Of which 300 feet were decorated

- 1000 miles of driving to deliver them

- I estimate 4 barrels of biscuits, 5 chocolate bars and 70 cups of coffee.

The tree on the right is a large tree in blue and silver decorations that we thought looked particularly good.

I also thought I'd add some pics of the gestation of the biggest (18 foot) tree that we do:

First, the ever dignified Derek making a bow tie of a bow, not knowing Becca is adding her own contribution to the photo:

Becca was obviously in a festive mood, as she decided to decorate the safety cones we position round our work area:

Because this tree is larger than our biggest ladders, we actually have to decorate the top third while it's still on its side. It takes Debra's (working on tree) great decoration skills to know how to decorate a tree before she knows how it's going to hang once upright:

By the way, is it my imagination, or is Claire (red hair) checking Derek's manly frame out in the background?

Finally, the finished product, with from left to right: Claire, Derek, me and Debra.

If you're wondering whether I'm going to do a sales pitch for Christmas Trees, you've missed your chance this year, but for next year, please contact us next Autumn. Do not leave it until December, as it turns out we get very busy!

Jonathan