Stewarts Office Plants

We supply many businesses across the South, from Sussex and Surrey, through Hampshire and Dorset to Wiltshire and Somerset. For more information about the services we offer visit our home page, or contact us here. In this blog you'll find news, interesting snippets, stories and pictures of our staff's adventures out on the road.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Two fantastic bespoke hanging baskets for sale!

Ooops!

As a result of me deciding a client - who always has four hanging baskets - wanted six hanging baskets, we now have two amazing 18" hanging baskets for sale right now.

These are not the kind of baskets you see for sale off-the-shelf in garden centres.

They have been specially prepared in 18" frames and absolutely stuffed with plants, by a real expert that we get to make all our baskets.

They are a good two foot across, are barely liftable, and need hanging off very substantial hooks.

They are for sale at £100 for the pair, including free delivery and erection, if you live in Dorset or Hampshire.

Call the office on 01202 882463 or email me on the link below.

Jonathan

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

It's health and safety gone mad!

This is not, I hasten to add, in one of our maintenance contracts. For a start we very rarely use Cycad palms, and if we did they'd look healthier than this. Also the soil would be topped up a lot nearer the rim in a Stewarts contract.

Anyway, bitchiness out of the way, this is a picture of a planter I stumbled upon on a forum the other day in a discussion about OTT safety warning signs. The 'sharp plant' bit is understandable (Cycads are!) but the 'do not eat' bit surely goes without saying.

I posted it here as I thought it was an honourable sequel to my famous plant labelled "plant" post last year.

Safety signs like this are all jolly good fun, but in my experience what happens in one contract invariably appears elsewhere. The relatively recent fashion - spreading out from energy and utility companies' premises - is to mandate the holding of the handrail when travelling up and down stairs. This is not ideal when your job involves habitually carrying two watering cans.

Solution? My staff just use the lift. Purely for safety reasons, not laziness, obviously.

Jonathan

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Flowering Swiss Cheese Plant

Here's something I've never seen before, after 16 years in the job.

This is (dodgy) phone pic taken of an enormous Monstera Deliciosa (aka Swiss Cheese Plant) cascading down a rockery in an aquarium in Bournemouth, where we have looked after the plants for over fifteen years.

I don't get to go there very often, so was delighted to see the Cheese Plant was so happy that it had produced these enormous - if not particularly pretty - flowers. They are a good six inches long, and as I say I'm certain I've never seen one flower before.

It's an unusual maintenance job, compared to the average office plant maintenance job, though it does come straight after the plants on the end of Bournemouth Pier I've mentioned before. It's certainly the only job where we are watched closely by terrapins when drawing water from a tap just inside their enclosure.

Jonathan

Hanging basket season begins

It has got to that time of year when we are starting to deliver and install hanging baskets.

As usual we have a clamour from customers to put them up earlier than the usual time of the second half of May. As I've blogged before it's not advisable when there is still the possibility of frost.

But one pub in Corfe Castle in the lovely Purbeck region of Dorset wants them now, so we've supplied seventeen of them this week.

Thirty nine to go!

Jonathan

Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Now a new look for the Transit


As I mentioned in my last post about our little vans being stickered up, Stewarts Interior Landscaping is undergoing a gradual re-branding to bring us in line with the rest of the Stewarts Garden Centre group.

On Friday afternoon I left our trusty Transit delivery van looking like the picture to the right - the old Stewarts livery. The company we use to livery them came in on Saturday morning and worked their magic and it now looks like the picture above.

It's funny how you don't realise something is looking dated until it's updated. I like the fact it shows potential customers a picture of what we do, and also tells them; no more having to try and explain to my neighbours what it is that I do all day.

Given the choice of the palm over the lollipop Ficus I went for the palm - I think it looks better on a big van. Now we only have two vans with the old livery to go, both to be replaced in the next year so no point in redoing. But they suddenly look really old!

Jonathan