|
About Grass Roots Horticulture
It was this lack of horticultural insight from so many landscapers that inspired Paul Fealey (Grass Roots Horticulture's founder - seen above -during his 4 years supplying stock to trade from a wholesale nursery) to carry out site visits - as part of the service and at the request of landscapers - to appraise and assess the conditions that determine which plants would flourish and which would wither.
These site surveys - and the subsequent designs and planting schemes devised for landscapers - became an increasingly important part of his role as Nursery Manager, and led to a mutual relationship between the nursery and local landscapers, whose customers remained happy with their work in the long term as their garden matured over time. When this part of nursery life began to clash with other commercial duties, and with the nursery owner deciding to bring in part time help to cover admin. duties during the time he spent away, he made the tough decision to part company with the nursery and to set up Grass Roots Horticulture to continue this relationship with both commercial and domestic customers, and also to become 'hands-on' on a full-time basis.
Apart from the on-paper designs and planting schemes that Grass Roots Horticulture supplies to both trade and public, our main commodity is horticultural expertise and its application in the field to the betterment of a wide range of issues. For example, knowing when, how and why pruning & coppicing is necessary, knowing specific plant ailments, susceptibilities and treatments, knowing which require acidic and which require alkaline soil, knowing which are shade tolerant and which are not, knowing which are drought-resistant, knowing which herbicides to use and at which time of the year, knowing when and how to apply nutrients to plants for correct root uptake, knowing which plants must have shelter from wind, knowing and understanding the visual clues to plant health - and so on. The list is extensive enough to support a whole website in itself.
So, where is Grass Roots Horticulture's place within this industry, and how does this differ to that of landscapers? As horticulturalists, we do not lay paving or patios, build walls, or take part in any other such hard surface construction: we leave this to the builders that we contract. This is their trade and the ones we trust do it very well, be it in the home, in the garden, or on a building site. This is a mutually compatible relationship, as we are often called upon to add a horticultural flair with their jobs as much as they are called in to ours to compliment our designs with walls, paving etc.
Our expertise in this broad field has led to us being called onto sites by hard landscaping specialists (who admit to knowing as much about horticulture as we know about construction) because the job requires both structural and horticultural landscaping. Our remit in such cases has been either to assess and advise, or to undertake the work ourselves. The main difference between the work we undertake and that which many landscapers carry is out is simplicity itself:
Our work matures over time to the benefit of the customer!
Because of our extensive ans expansive skills and knowledge in horticultural matters, many clients who come to us often have requirements that call for nothing other than horticultural skills, as opposed to a total garden or business premises transformation with hard surface construction. This is a practice that we encourage greatly, as too often planting and horticulture play second fiddle to hard landscaping.
|
Half-acre garden of a £3m new-build project we designed and created on the exclusive Four Oaks Estate
|
