Garden Visit to Reuben Shaw

On Wednesday the 7th of May 32 members of the gardening group went for a visit to Reuben Shaw’s garden centre at Moorgreen.
We started off in the tea room with a drink a piece of cake or a scone before moving on to a behind the scenes tour which included a demonstration of filling a hanging basket and a tour around the poly tunnels to see how they grew their plants on a commercial basis.
For this we split into two groups with Lee doing the demonstration.
Firstly he talked about liners and compost. He filled a 16” basket with, one upright geranium, removing all buds and flowers, then two trailing fuchsias, again pitching out the flowers, followed by two trailing geraniums. We were told that these plants would bush out and flower in 4-6 weeks. He then filled in with helichrysum, verbena, lobelia and an Indian mint for fragrance. The small bushy plants he cut down with scissors and the others he pricked out with his fingers. He ended up with about 12 plants in the basket. He then showed us one that had been done three weeks ago so we could see how much it had grown. They prepare the baskets and hang them for a month before going to customers. He said that they should be feed every third watering.
We then swapped over and went with Mathew around the growing poly tunnels, of which there are 6. They grow over 2,000 plants a year and do all the baskets for Broxtowe Borough Council for Eastwood, Kimberley etc.
All the hanging baskets and pots are checked every day to see if they need watering, this is done by picking them up and checking by weight and eye, as the tunnels contain such a variety of plants with different watering needs.
After the tours we were able to spend time in the shop and nursery to buy plants etc.
It was a very informative visit and thanks you to Lee and Mathew for showing us around.
Pat Painter