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During the hot summer of 1976 the position of Manager (initially called Head Gardener) at the Central Nursery of Thames Water Authority's  Metropolitan Division became vacant due to a retirement.  At the same time they also advertised for a Landscape Assistant for which a friend of mine who had also been apprentice at Slough but then had gone on to Kew and at the time was in a similar position  in Bedford decided to apply.  We both went for interviews and both were successful and both started on the same day in September at Laleham.  Neither of us had let on we knew each other and they had not picked it up from our c.v.'s at the interviews so it came as a complete surprise to them when we were introduced to each other by the Gardens Superintendent our line manager.  The nursery, consisting of 7 acres of which about a quarter of an acre was glass, was in quite a bit of a mess especially the open ground areas and the first job was to get the place tidy and set out a plant to bring its production up to date.  I was 28 and most of the staff were older and this was my first management position so you can imagine there was some resistance to my ideas but these were gradually overcome. 

The nursery was originally set up by the Metropolitan Water Board to supply seasonal planting, trees and shrubs for its extensive grounds within Greater London, which were more like parks rather than works grounds, as well as interior plant displays for its offices.  A couple of years before I joined Thames Water Authority was set up and the MWB became the Metropolitan Division of that.  Thames Conservancy also became part of TWA and it was agreed that the nursery would also supply the summer bedding plants for all the locks on the Thames rather than the lock keepers each growing their own.  So the plant production was quite extensive and became even more so as the Landscape Assistant began a lot of new landscape work within the area.

The nursery produced approximately 200,000 seasonal bedding plants, 40,000 shrubs and 3000 trees, and 12,000 flowering and foliage pot plants.  At that time there were seven staff to produce these plants and services.  Cultivation of these crops was very similar to that I had practised at Slough but gradually developed the shrub production into containers and the trees were grown on 3-4 year plan from 60/90cm whips and planted out on sites at light standard size.  The tree production was mainly to extend and maintain plantings around the large reservoirs in the Thames Valley area.

For Thames Conservancy I produced a list of the summer bedding plants we were going to grow for the following season in September, each Lock-keeper then selected what he would like for his display. As these plants had to be ready at least two weeks before the traditional bedding out date of the beginning of June separate batches had to be grown.  The distribution of the bedding plants for the locks on the whole length of the Thames was a logistics nightmare and carried out over the last two weeks of May.  The trays of plants were put onto trollies in the orders for the individual locks and loaded on to a large box lorry and then distributed to the individual locks except to the locks on the upper Thames where it was impossible to get a large lorry to them and they were then loaded to boats and delivered from them.

The Metropolitan Division was divided into three areas, Thames Valley, Lea Valley and Kent, with a Head Gardener in charge of each area and so distribution to these was not so bad as all the plants were sent into the main depot for the area and distributed by them to their individual sites.  The exception to this was the head office in London where they were sent direct as it was a large planting scheme.

I designed all the planting schemes for the seasonal bedding plant displays which were changed on the traditional twice a year, at the beginning of June and the beginning of October.  Over the years we won 8 Certificates of Excellence from the London Tourist Board for our displays.

In 1982 Thames Water went through a reorganisation and my position was regraded and the title changed to Nursery Manager and I had to directly report to a Group Manager who was a civil engineer rather than a horticultural line manager.  The only changes this made to my responsibilities were that I had full budgetary control and as my friend who had been Landscape Assistant had left I had to design any planting plans and give horticultural advice throughout Thames Water.

In June 1984 I received an invitation out of the blue to the London Tourist Board's London in Bloom Reception at the National Westminster Hall in the City of London.  I was undecided whether to attend as no other person from the gardening staff was invited and nor was my wife however I did and it turned out to be a spectacular occasion.  Many London dignitaries were there and the awards were to be presented by Princess Margaret.  The award ceremony was well under way when all of a sudden the host started talking about the extent of the grounds in London owned by Thames Water and how well those grounds were maintained and the contribution they make to London in Bloom.  Then I heard my name mentioned and called forward to accept an award for my personal contribution to London in Bloom, in shock I went forward to accept the Pat Moran Award from Princess Margaret.  The Pat Moran Award is a personal award given by the London in Bloom committee to the person felt to have made a major contribution to London through horticulture.

The glory was short lived as within weeks through another reorganisation preparing Thames Water for privatisation I was told that the nursery was to be sold as a going concern in about 12 months.  Not being one to shy away from a challenge I wrote directly to the Chairman and Managing Director of Thames Water in August  1984 expressing my utter disbelief at this decision immediately after we had just received praise for our efforts in London.  In early September the Chairman visited the nursery and shortly after this I was asked to put forward my proposal as to how the nursery could be run commercially therefore not just providing Thames' requirements but to star selling our produce to landscapers and garden centres.  This I did in a report 'Laleham Nursery - A Future'.   Several meetings followed and I was asked to put my proposals in a report with a business plan, however, following this things were not looking good so I asked ADAS to come in and put forward suggestions and after this I submitted revisions and to my surprise after several more meetings on May 16th 1985 it was agreed to give us a trial period until April 1987.  This was going to be difficult to pull of as it only gave us on full growing season to turn a local government nursery into a commercial enterprise.

The nursery was to be operated under the Commercial Directorate and so the only criteria they were interested in was the bottom line.  We had to think of a name for the nurseries and my wife came up with Waterside Nurseries because it was situated alongside an aqueduct.  So in August 1985 Waterside Nurseries was born.  Sadly during all the uncertainty one of my propagators had left and to reduce the staff down to the three full-time members and already untrained staff had been transferred to grounds maintenance.  Several ground breaking things for what was still classed as local government were carried out, firstly we were allowed to employ seasonal part-time and although nothing could be down about the wages of the existing  full-time staff which were way above horticultural rates, the part-time staff were employed on local rates.  Secondly we had our van sign written with the Waterside Nurseries name and logo and with only low profile TW roundels on the doors. Thirdly we started advertising, produced a catalogue and selling to private companies.  However, I was unable to negotiate out of having the standard TW on-cost levied against the nursery.  Initially things were slow to get off the ground and resistance to local government getting involved in commercial enterprise was strong.  The opinion was that production would be subsidised and our prices would undercut local business to their detriment, which was far from the truth.  We set our prices around the market average and traded on our quality and in March 1986 had a trade open day to launch the new season. 

We started slowly to build a customer base and in 1987 were thrown another lifeline by a company called Brit Koi who were looking for somewhere to set up a retail centre to sell Koi Carp, so our deadline of April came and went while negotiations went on.  It was decided that Brit Koi would set up their fish ponds in one of the large glasshouses and we would set up display beds around this house to sell our plants and Brit Koi staff would run the retail outlet.  However, negotiation went on and on through 1987 and into 1988 and because of the slow bureaucracy of Thames Water eventually Brit Koi pulled out. 

Sadly this sealed our fate and although we had made substantial inroads into bringing the nursery to a break even position our high labour costs and TW overheads had made it an impossibility, so in May 1989 the nursery closed and was eventually sold off.  Two of my staff were redeployed, the other took early retirement and I took voluntary severance, well it was either that or go and work in an office in Reading.