Digswell Nurseries - People and Plants Growing Together

The Spring and Summer season here at Digswell Nurseries is always a manic time for all involved and this year was no exception! The season during the previous year (2008) was heavily advertised in local media, much to our success, but also to our downfall, due to a lack of plants to sell to the general public! So this year to save having egg on our faces once again, the decision was made to grow triple the amount of plants and also to increase the range of plant varieties offered.

 

Plants were not the centre of attention however. Following a period of research, it was found that in the local community of Welwyn and Hatfield, there were few or no places for small children to let off steam in a safe, peaceful and easily accessible surroundings, and above all, no places where this would be at no charge for parking or entry. Well now there is! Digswell Nurseries now has a purpose-built play area with small children up to the age of eight in mind.

 

However things never go completely without a hitch. Earlier in the year it was found that the floor of our small and perfectly formed Flowerpot Coffee Shop had rotted away and fallen through – much to our surprise!  Alas, after a short period of fundraising and very hard work, the Coffee Shop was completely dismantled, a new concrete floor laid, and everything put back as good as new, ready for the grand opening on the re-launch weekend.

 

In the run up to the big event, the whole team was running around like ‘headless chickens’, dibbing out, stocking the shop with plants that had been painstakingly grown by the HappyGardeners team, and also planting a number of hanging baskets for sale on the Re-launch/hanging basket weekend.

 

The team at Digswell Nurseries had also intermittently grown, with the assistance of the Probation Services and the Community Payback. These guys have worked extremely hard as part of their payback to the community, renovating pathways, weeding, moving plants and laying slabs on our new allotment area.

 

As well as the Community Payback team, our partnership with North Hertfordshire College New Deal Placement Scheme continues, offering works and skills experience to those who are recently or long-term employed. Our most recent batch of placements was a great asset to the team during our busiest period of the year and throughout the re-launch period.

 

So with everything in place, all that was left to promote the event, with a little help from our friends at Hertbeat FM, who covered the weekend very well, with a live broadcast from the first day of the weekend.

 

The effect of the advertising was colossal! The nurseries were at their busiest for a long time, with a wide range of people of all ages of the local community coming to have a look at what Digswell Nurseries had to offer. Children were running riot in the play area, ladies were sampling cappuccinos from the Coffee Shop, and trolleys of plants were flying into car boots! 

 

With the great success of the re-launch weekend, and the weeks that followed, Digswell has had a great response and feedback from the local community, with a much wider range of people visiting the Nurseries, including many from the local area who didn’t even know that we existed! Many people have also been visiting our brand new website: happygardeners.org – a great success all round for the whole team!