The Market Garden
At Sands Lane Nurseries
Hello everybody,
We are, Gordon and Sue Badham seen here in our farm shop and café, which is at our nursery.
We own The Market Garden, a two acre nursery, which is predominately glass, based at South Cave, East Yorkshire.
Now growing British cut flowers and taking part in the CWWW/LEADER pilot scheme to encourage and promote the growing of cut flowers in and around the East Riding.
Originally for some 20 years we grew cucumbers for the supermarkets, but with the ever increasing cost of fuel and the lack of loyalty from our customers, (which despite what they say about supporting British produce and growers) rarely seemed to filter down to us.
We stopped growing cucumbers and looked to what the nursery could used for instead. There was already a small area for retailing plants, mainly seasonal bedding plants, it seemed sensible to try and build on this. We decided to grow strawberries, raspberries, tayberries and blueberries in the greenhouses for pyo, yet this still left a lot of the nursery empty.
On the nursery there was a packing shed, which we converted into the farm shop and café. The farm shop sold fruit and vegetables grown on the nursery, but although now not selling to the supermarkets you were still competing with them for products which looked identical.
Sue had talked about growing flowers at times over the last couple of years, when her mum rang and said she had seen this lady on TV growing English cut flowers. This was how we first heard about flowers from the farm, we then contacted Gill, signed up, went to her workshop and became inspired by what she is doing. We realised that this is something totally different from what is currently being sold, we totally agree with the ethos of reducing fuel miles and buying locally, this fits in perfectly with our business of growing and selling, we retail through the farm shop and at some local farmers markets.
We now have beds prepared, bulbs and herbaceous plants in, some seeds sown and even some pricked of, we are both excited at this new challenge.
Sue has been busy with the seed and plant catalogues and we will have lots of beautiful flowers this season i.e. Alliums, Antirrhinums, Asters, Bells of Ireland, Cosmos, corn flowers, phlox, sweet peas, Canterbury Bells, Delphiniums and the list will not stop there.
We are both passionate and excited about supplying our customers with our beautiful home grown flowers, and are totally looking forward to the 2012 growing season.