Open Day for ‘Greening Gloucestershire’ stakeholders

Staff from Gloucestershire County Council (GCC) and 25 other guests from its ‘Greening Gloucestershire’ stakeholders attended a special Open Day and tour with us recently (September 2023).

They visited our Transplants section, had a walk & talk through our Transplant Fields and stopped-by the Container Trees site before touring our Container Plants department.

Alan Young, our Amenity Sales Executive & GCC Account Manager, explains: “A couple of months ago, I sowed the idea to GCC of us hosting a ‘Day on The Nursery’ event for their stakeholders. The GCC Tree Team thought this was a fabulous idea just ahead of the forthcoming 2023/24 planting season.”

Thousands of transplants & trees

We supply the full range of transplant tree and shrub species and related sundry items to GCC’s stakeholders, as part of GCC’s ‘Greening Gloucestershire’ campaign.

Throughout the upcoming season, we will supply many thousands of transplants and trees through the county of Gloucestershire.

Among those who attended the event were GCC’s Tree Team, as well as tree wardens, arboriculturists and representatives from other local authorities, the Duchy of Cornwall, Gloucestershire Local Nature Partnership, Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, schools and other charities.

All our departments

The day included a full tour of all our departments, starting at Transplants, then Container Plants and Trees. Our guests saw plants growing in the fields, as well as our propagation unit and potting facilities.

Alan adds: “Together we made the event happen. The sun shone for us! We had lovely blue skies and warm sunshine all day to undertake a full guided tour of our nurseries, from the very smallest trees at our transplant nursery near Ledbury, to our tallest trees at our Tree Nursery.

Wine tasting

“We also visited our container plants nursery in Hereford, where our Nursery Manager, Steve Read talked to the group about ‘in – house propagation’ with a tour of our Propagation unit and re-using water on the nursery. Our Production Manager, Kyle Ross gave us an interesting talk on biosecurity measures and the importance of buying from a Plant Healthy Certified nursery.

“We also visited our famous new reservoir. Everyone had a fabulous day and there was lots of discussion and networking within the group. We even managed to visit Foxbury Fields, the vineyard owned by our Chairman, Heather Williamson, for a wine tasting session before the grapes for this season are harvested. The event was very successful for all. We intend to repeat it in 2024