Here’s me (Alexia Ballance) in 2003...

With all those seeds in the fridge, we’ll have to cut back on eating, but at last I have space to grow lots of

Blooming Marvellous plants!

 

 

In the next instalment of this diary I’ll say some more thankyous, including to Lindsay (everything), Annie (clearing, potting, digging), Robert (bonfire supremo), Simon & Gill (concrete maestros) and Daisy the Rottweiler!  

Or should that be “Life begins at 40”?

This is the story of leaving a comfortable office job to create a plant nursery from scratch in a windy meadow in Buckinghamshire, close to Winslow, Aylesbury, Buckingham, Leighton Buzzard & Milton Keynes.

...while working for IBM, but always preferring to be outside growing things from seed and cuttings, or studying for my Royal Horticultural Society exams.  So I decided to follow my dream at last, and grow garden plants for a living, while studying for the RHS Diploma.     

Luckily my best friend’s parents have 14 acres and two farm buildings, and with huge kindness have agreed to let me use some of it to start the nursery.  Thank you, Don and Margaret.

A great opportunity, although the plumbing is limited.

My best friend, Lindsay, and I were cold, tired and dirty, but I’ve never been happier in my life than when we were unloading my first polytunnel!  And what a helpful driver, even though it was Friday  and he was facing staying the night at a trucker’s stop in Buckingham because he’d driven too long.. 

He

Then, with a little help from my friends (see below)

So this is me by March 2004...

Starting a nursery—how Blooming Marvellous Plants was born and grew up

For plants you can trust, come to…