About us
Crosby Holme Grown brings together a few services under one name. I grow and sell perennial plants, keep Honeybees, sell hive products and offer a limited gardening maintenance service.
Why we Grow
Plants are utterly awesome!
They underpin most ecosystems and food chains on the planet, and we would not survive without them. Countless millions of other animals also depend on plants for their food, or their foods’ food. Over time, especially the last few centuries human activity has sadly depleted the quantity and diversity of plants, and consequently animals. With the increasing commodification of the horticultural sector even some cultivated varieties of plants are increasingly rare.
On a personal level it keeps me fit, benefits my mental health, gives me intimate contact with ‘Nature’, the possibility of ongoing learning and gives me the vague sensation I am doing something for the wellbeing of both other people and our environment. I grow veg to feed the family, but I grow flowering plants to feed the other animals and my soul.
What we Grow
Our aim is to grow a range of plants that are suited to local conditions in Cumbria, provide benefits to wildlife, enhance the garden ecosystem and provide interest across the seasons.
General selection strategy
Space limits the total quantity I can grow so I aim for breadth of range rather than volume. All plants are grown on site from seed or vegetative propagation.
Important factors that I consider are:
Flowers
Should be ‘open’ so that pollen and nectar are available to insects. And should be of varying shapes to accommodate the feeding preferences of various insects.
Seed heads
Should be attractive and ideally provide food for birds where possible.
Foliage
Should be suitable for the younger life stages of both pollinating and predatory insects.
Cultivars
Generally speaking If you’d find it in your local chain or franchised (so called!) “Garden Center” you probably won’t see it on our stall. But, I do have some of those in the garden, and they occasionally need splitting so it could happen occasionally.
Our preference however is to actively track down more unusual, rarer, and less available cultivars for your garden delight. In this we are also supporting the work of Plant Heritage who work to “…conserve the unique gene pool of accumulated variation from centuries of selection and breeding, a resource of great economic potential and heritage value.” (Brickell, 1977). Who knows what genetic trait may prove crucial in the face of Climate Change.
Native plants
It has been scientifically proven that although adult insects will take nectar and pollen from any flowering plant that matches their feeding apparatus, when it comes to raising the next generations the native plants that they evolved with are the best food sources.
I therefore also pay heed to where plant species originated and if horticultural cultivars are related to our natives. Where the originating species is not native endeavour to ensure that they come from equivalent climactic zones and where possible are related to native genera (often known as near native).
General overview of plants
Annuals / Biennials
We encourage everyone to have a go at these from seed, or to leave a patch of garden to seed naturally and just do its thing. However, for reasons of limited space we do not grow these to sell.
Native Wildflowers
We do grow a small selection of these. However, there is a specialist supplier fairly near to us so rather than treading on their toes we’re happy to direct you there. Where selections of a plant are available with, say, a different stem colour we grow these instead, so you get the benefits of both the wild plant and a more unusual garden plant.
Grasses
Grasses can provide superb late summer / autumn interest and structure in the garden. They are also important larval food plants of several insects and can provide useful overwintering habitat. The range of grasses we grow is slowly expanding.
Perennials
These are the bulk of our range. I love to grow them. When looking for new cultivars to grow I take the species that are native in the UK as a starting point. Many have fantastic, cultivated varieties.
Tender perennials
Aside from the few dahlias we grow to brighten the back door and a couple of tender herbs we don’t intentionally grow these to sell. The space and energy required to overwinter them reliably is not really sustainable on our scale. But they do sometimes outgrow their pots or require dividing to keep vigorous so occasionally we may offer them for sale.
Shrubs
We grow a few shrubs for personal interest and structure. When propagation material is available, we do propagate from then. Often these occupy valuable space for a long time to establish so we typically have low quantities.
How we Grow
As nurseries go, we are pretty small, our entire site runs to about ¾ acres, and this includes the house, sheds, veg-plot, apiary and hen run. If ever there was such a thing as a micro-nursery, that’s us. This means we must be as efficient as we can be on how we use the space we have.
We take our responsibility towards our planet seriously too and are continually looking to tread as lightly on the Earth as we do on our beds and borders. Consequently, we grow peat and pesticide free using Organic principals and methods.
The plants-woman Beth Chatto coined the phrase “right plant, right place”. In effect this means that plants located in conditions that closely replicate where they would grow in the wild will grow successfully and use less resources to do so. We follow this as closely as we can, the plants I grow need to be able to survive on their own terms in the conditions dictated by our site. In our case this roughly equates to a dampish woodland glade / hedgerow / meadow on the edge of a flood plain. We mainly have part shade, but also areas of full sun and full shade and so grow for these conditions as space allows. Anything we grow must be up for temperatures of -10ºC or lower and be willing to take its chances of the occasional flood.
When it comes to considering how to run a horticultural business producing ornamental rather than edible plants as sustainably as possible you quickly find you are sharing the room with some rather large elephants. The weightiest of these pachyderms are Peat, Plastics and Organic standards.
Peat Free
As far as possible the plants we propagate from are grown in beds and borders in open ground. These plants are given a dressing of our own garden compost every now and then but otherwise just allowed to do their thing. When we propagate plants, we give them a minimum of mollycoddling to keep them tough. We grow our plants on in Dalefoot Wool Compost, which is Soil Association approved Organic, Peat free, and local to us which minimises transport emissions. Peatlands cover only about 3% of global and 12% of UK land areas, despite this they contain twice as much sequestered carbon as all the Rainforests. About 80% of the UK’ peatland is in degraded or severely degraded condition. This degradation contributes to CO2 emissions and to rainwater run off causing erosion and flooding. Crosby Holme Grown has been flooded twice since 2015 and we refuse to be part of the problem. To this excellent compost we add small amounts of slow-release Organic fertiliser, and a tiny amount of a mix of our own garden soil, garden compost and leafmould to inoculate it with beneficial soil micro-fauna. We may then add sand, grit, vermiculite, or perlite as suits individual plant varieties. Any supplementary feeding on the nursery is done with Comfrey or Seaweed based teas or sprays.
Plastics
Plastics are nigh on indestructible on human timescales and pose a tricky issue for nurseries. We don’t hold stock and only buy in the quantity of pots we need (‘Reduce’). We chose a good pot quality, look after what we do buy in and as plants grow on and are re-potted, or are divided and propagated we continually reuse as many of these as we can (‘Reuse’). We chose a pot brand that makes their pots from at least partly but more usually fully recycled plastic and of a type that can be recycled. If they do reach the end of their functional life, we ensure they are responsibly recycled (‘Recycle’). Most pots we currently have in circulation are coloured black, which has the drawback that they cannot be put in kerbside recycling because the sorting machines “can’t see” them. From 2022 most new pots coming into us will be the ‘Taupe” coloured machine recyclable ones but these will take a while to filter through to points of sale. To further reduce the flow of plastic from 2022 we will be transfering all plants up to 2L in to cardboard “POSIpots” when sold. These will last up to 2 weeks which is ample time to transfer the plants to their new home.
Pest and disease management
Pest and disease management and control on the nursery is achieved in keeping with Integrated Pest Management (IPM) principles.
We grow our plants to be as healthy as possible, so they stand the best chance of fighting problems themselves.
We respect that most “pests” are just living their normal lives and tolerate a certain level of pest damage as this is actually natural and without prey to act as a food source it is difficult to encourage natural predation.
We actively encourage natural predators – hoverfly, lacewings, beetles, wasps, amphibians, birds etc by ensuring their food water and habitat needs are met. Usually, this way things stay in balance.
If we observe a pest is gaining the upper hand, we favour the minimum effective action. These will only include – remediating any cultural issues (e.g., light or moisture), removal by hand, weak horticultural soap spray, or a boosting of natural predators such as nematodes.
Certification
While Organic growing principles and methods are free for anyone to use official Organic Certification presents hurdles to businesses on the scale of ours. On the admin side, to achieve certification there is a need for detailed record keeping, annual inspections, and annual certification fees. On the technical side there are a number of hurdles: Certification was originally designed for crops spending their entire life in open soil and intended for human consumption, this is difficult to achieve for ornamental crops; repeated transfers between soil and pots for sale would be detrimental to the plants. Source material for propagation must be either already certified when bought (which is almost never in the case for ornamentals), or either grown on in a certified organic system for two years or propagated on organically for two generations before being considered an organic source of propagating material. I would then need to bulk up my stock till there was enough to sell. Presently it is not at all clear if pot cultivation for ornamentals is acceptable or if derogations need to be sought from DEFRA incurring further admin time and costs and delay. Ultimately, we would have to pass on the cost of all the extra time and overheads, so we chose to work with the principles, but not to seek certification.
Crosby Holme Bees
We manage our bees with as light a touch as possible to enable them to thrive and when weather allow produce award winning, local produce.
Our bees are our local Cumbrian open mated variant of Apis melifera. We care for them in a similar manner to our plants, with the least intervention we can using British Standard hives, Snelgrove based swarm management and Integrated Pest Control methodology. We do not feed our bees.
The limited foraging radius of a honeybee colony means they are dependent on very localised weather conditions and food supplies, in some years there is no surplus honey to harvest and sell. We also sell beeswax and further products are in development. See Bees & Hive Products for more.
Gardening Services
While I have the equipment, experience, qualifications, and insurance to offer garden maintenance services, my scope for this is limited by both time and manpower – ie it’s just me!. I can offer assistance with most tasks: – design, planting, pruning, hedge cutting, mowing, edging, strimming / brush-cutting, weed control, tree work up to a working height of 3m, and smaller scale hard landscaping e.g., edgings and fencing.
Currently I am not able to accept any more work but am open to discussing discreet tasks or projects. Please contact me to start a conversation.
How we Sell
Our main sales are at local and regional plant and craft fairs.
Our main sales are direct to our customers, in person, at local and regional specialist plant fairs. Sometimes we attend more general events. We predominantly, sell plants from spring through to autumn. From late summer, subject to availability we are also able to sell honey and hive products, and this may continue through to Christmas craft fairs.
All events will be advertised on our “where to find us” page and will also be posted as ‘Events’ on our Facebook page.
At the present time we are not able to offer online or mail order sales of plants due to the prohibitive expense of the required APHA inspections required for ‘Plant Passport’ licensing under the relevant UK phytosanitary legislation. Our nursery is not open as a business location. If you can’t catch us at a show, or did and require more plants between events please contact us here and it should be possible to arrange a personal visit.
Honey and hive products, when available, may be posted. If you are local enough to us a collection or delivery may be possible if you contact us here.
