On the 9th May 1989 I became self-employed and Plants Indoors was born.  One of the garden centres that purchased plants from Waterside Nurseries was Vermeulens at Stanwell Moor near Staines and it was to Peter Vermeulen I turned to request a place to base my business.  Peter agreed and also offered me to operate his houseplant section at the centre as a franchise which was ideal because it enabled me to keep a stock of plants for maintenance and kept the retail stock turning over.  I gradually started to build a small business servicing businesses mainly around Heathrow airport, however, I soon got the bug to continue growing plants.

Behind the garden centre they had some spare ground and I asked Peter if I could rent some ground to put up some tunnels, he agreed and I erected a large polyhouse and two smaller tunnels and started growing bedding plants etc. for the garden centre with my first crops in the spring of 1990 and I continued to grow there until the end of 1992.

Early in 1991 Peter came to me and asked if I would be interested in developing a retail nursery for him from a green field site, this was an opportunity I could not miss and we agreed on terms that would allow me to continue Plants Indoors as well as develop the nursery.  He was buying some land at Sutton Green in Surrey which is on the A320 between Woking and Guildford and this was where he was planning to develop a new centre.  At his request I planned the nursery and ordered in the services and in August 1991 the erection of the structures began and the foundations of Sutton Green Garden Nursery were laid.  We erected two 30m x 20m three-span polyhouses for growing and a 10m x 20m three-span polytarp covered structure for retailing.  Between the two growing houses was an area for growing containerised shrubs and herbaceous and to the rear of the retail structure the area was developed into display beds.  The rest of the land was to developed into a pick your own fruit centre with the main aim to extend the normal sales season.

Our initial enquiries to Woking Borough Council regarding whether we needed planning for the nursery drew no reaction so we went ahead and it was our intention to use an old farm entrance gate as our entrance off of the A320 but as soon as we started to lay our entrance road the council reacted and said we would need to apply for planning approval.  And so began a long drawn out planning battle.  Our initial retrospective application was turned down and on the basis the development was too large for the quantity of crops we were going to grow.  The basis of this decision was a report by the Surrey County Agriculture Officer who in his report to the council stated the number of trays of bedding plants we were intending to grow as the number of plants which obviously was about a 20% of the actual number.  We employed a planning consultant who prepared an appeal but it soon became apparent the council was not happy with the access and wanted it transferred into the lane nearby and a whole lot of road improvements done at our cost.  Many of our new customers who agreed with us signed a petition against the nurseries closure.  Eventually a date was set for the appeal in 1993 but at the 11th hour the council withdrew their objections with the proviso that we resited our entrance and stood the cost of the road improvements, which we reluctantly agreed, however as the nursery had opened in 1992 pending the appeal, by this time the nursery had developed a good customer base

Sutton Green Garden Nursery opened for trading on the 1st February 1992, with me managing the nursery and pick your own overall and with responsibility for the growing and Tony Stevens who had joined me after spending many years with Thames Valley Rose Growers was responsible for the retailing.  Early in 1992 we employed several part-time staff to assist with the pricking out and then as sales developed to assist with the retailing, several of these stayed with us a number of years and became part of what I considered a dream team.

Our aim was to grow the majority of our own crops and sell any surplus through the Stanwell Moor centre.  The first crops we produced for 1992 were started the previous year, primroses, pansies and herbaceous and alpines from seed and these were bolstered by buying in a range of shrubs, roses and trees etc..  These were soon followed by our first range of summer bedding plants.  My production programme was designed to carry the full range of varieties over the whole season which is often not available from garden centres, to this end most varieties were sown at fortnightly intervals to provide quality plants through the season of about 6 weeks from the beginning of May.  I also decided to grow only named ranges of plants and promote these names, for example Marigold Alamo varieties, Petunia Frenzy varieties, Impatiens Accent varieties etc., the majority of which came from seed or young plug plants from Colegraves Seeds. 

Herbaceous roots were bought in over the winter of 1991-2 and planted in 3lt pots to be available for sale from spring 1992 and also to provide a stock to divide from each following winter.

As the summer bedding season came to an end we bought in shrub liners to grow on in 2lt and 3lt containers for sale the following year.  These were then followed by the production of wallflowers, pansies and polyanthus etc. for sale in the autumn.

Although we had planted some strawberries, raspberries, and other soft fruit in the autumn of 1991 and some fruited in 1992 our first main crop came in 1993 with the strawberries starting at the end of may just as the summer bedding was in full swing and continued then with Raspberries etc. into July, this enabled us to continue selling plants well into the summer when most garden centres had come to a halt.

Customers seemed to like the quality of the plants, the competitive prices and service they received at Sutton Green and after only a couple of seasons we had developed a good customer base.  The nursery continued to increase sales and in 1995 we employed another full-time member of staff.

My basic contract with Peter Vermeulen was to work on average throughout the year 3 days a week at Sutton Green and except for the administration of Plants Indoors I was now nearly working full-time so in late 1995 when a small retail nursery came on the market to rent I put it to Peter that I would like to have a go.  The nursery was at Fontwell in West Sussex and as luck would have it, Sutton Green was on route, so on the days I went to Fontwell I would be able to call in at Sutton Green on the way.  Peter agreed and on the 1st January 1996 I took over 'Basket World'.  The owners had developed a business focussing on Fuchsias and hanging baskets but I decided to extend this to offer basically the same as Sutton Green and renamed the nursery Fontwell Plant Centre & Basket World.  Buying shrubs and herbaceous from Sutton Green and producing our own seasonal bedding along with a wide range of Fuchsias.  I took on the only full-time staff member there and employed a second and between them they would run the nursery day to day.  I had based my production on what the owners had said they had produced and sold the previous year, however it soon became apparent as we got into the summer bedding season something was wrong and word soon got back that all had not been well the previous year and many customers had taken there business elsewhere.  This left me well overstocked and out of pocket financially and it was clear that although the customers that had come back were pleased with our plants and service it was going to take several years to build the business back up and I did not have the finance to continue and so with great sadness I closed the nursery in August.  The owners of the nursery never have let or opened the nursery again since.

In 1998 our dream team at Sutton Green broke up when Tony decided he was going to retire early and this led to a very unsettling time as it was very difficult to find a replacement for someone with a lifetimes experience.  During 1999 we had to find replacements for both full-time places and luckily we were able at that time to find two applicants who would be suitable and started another settled period and although it became more difficult to raise turnover year on year as earlier we were able to keep the nursery on a steady business footing.

In early 2001 I decided this would be my last year managing the nursery and we began looking for a replacement which again proved more difficult than first thought but in the November we did and I left on the 31st December 2001.  I have not severed my connections completely though as I continue to do the book-keeping.