Over winter we spend time managing the land our nursery sits on. We strongly believe in managing it in a way which provides a good environment for our local wildlife, which happily also results in an environment we enjoy working in.

Since we bought the land, we have planted several new hedgerows and a traditional orchard, dredged a pond which was drying up and established a wilderness/wildflower area.

One of the ongoing jobs is clearing brambles and reinstating a section of old hedge. We've just planted hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel and dogwood in the section pictured; all native hedging plants which are excellent for wildlife. We do this in stages, over a period of several years, to ensure there is always a good amount of bramble, because that is also excellent for wildlife, particularly bees and hoverflies. If we didn't periodically clear it, the bramble would take over and eventually the hedge would die out.