Zesty Calamondin Gift Set £29                Red Hot Chilli Plant Gift Set £25

That's right we've not just been tending our plants this Summer we've been rustling up some treats for you in the kitchen. The chilli jelly and calamondin marmalade are produced right here from plants grown organically in our nursery. Head chef Alan (after many trials on the P4P staff) has perfected the recipes and we're now producing hundreds of pots of jelly and marmalade in our certified kitchen ready for the Christmas rush.

For the tea plant gift set though we felt we needed a little more specialist knowledge so we have teamed up with Sussex Tea company Toppers Tea to produce the first ever Sussex grown tea. This unique blend of our own organically grown tea combined with the finest quality assam blends from India make a very english cuppa! and what's more the gift set comes complete with a mature tea plant, full tea growing guide and tea sacs so tea enthusiasts can start growing and brewing their very own blend. Now thats a unique christmas gift if I ever I heard one!

Grow your own Tea Plant Gift Set £29              and enjoy the included tea brewed from our Sussex grown tea  

Over the next few weeks we will be manning the phones on Saturday mornings as well as 8am-6pm Monday to Friday so please do give us a call if you have any queries and we'll always do our best to help.

Nursery News - July 2011

Hampton Court is now in full swing! If you are visiting the show on over the 5th-10th July please do come along and say hello. Why not enter our free prize draw ? We are raffling the 7ft lemon tree that is the centre piece of our meditarranean patio garden. Remember we are in the Totally Plants section - Stand 265.

Our 7ft Lemon Tree               Smiles at the end of preview Day 4th July

Nursery News - June 2011

Where does the year go? It's summer again already! and only days to go to our debut at Hampton Court Flower show. The trellis work is all nicely planted up now, the sandstone patio from http://www.pnpavingsupplies.co.uk/ is arriving on Friday and we've got in some extra special citrus trees for our display garden.

If you are visiting the show on over the 5th-10th July please do come along and say hello.
2m Calamondin being prepared feature in our mediterranean patio garden; Dipadenia trellis work in full bloom

The other big news of the season is of course our reservoir opening! It took a lot of hard work and planning but the open day early this month was a great success! The day itself involved was glorious and well attended with over 70 visitors enjoying a rare tour of the working nursery.

Norman Baker 'cutting the ribbon' ; Isobel leading tours around the nursery;

Thanks must go to Norman Baker for coming down and doing the official honours and the heavens for finally delivering some rain! From now on our pot plants are being treated to nutrient rich rainwater rather than chlorinated tap water and we expect to see a number of health benefits over the coming weeks and months as the effect of this kicks in.

Our rainwater reservoir; new box designs;

Finally on a practical note, this quarter sees the introduction of the new logos across our plant boxes - we hope you like them as much as we do :)

Nursery News - March 2011

Well it's been a busy start to the year with lots of exciting new projects underway.

Firstly we're delighted with the launch of our new logo. After 7 years we wanted to brighten things up and create a logo that reflected what we do - plant gifts delivered. But also we wanted to reflect that we really do have quite a range of plants now. After much debate we settled on these vibrant greens and oranges to reflect the colours of our citrus trees which are after all, are one of our biggest sellers. We've stuck to the original present graphic but updated and expanded it to illustrate just a few of the over 70 plants we now have available each season.

We've already introduced this logo across the website, care instructions and postcards and over the coming months we will be spicing up all our box designs too. We hope you like the new look!

Photo caption : Our new more colourful logo for 2011

We've also been busy with our reservoir project and after several weeks digging, installing drainage pipes and culverts we now have a pretty impressive hole! All that we need now is the liner, pump and filter systems to stay on schedule and we expect to be harvesting rainwater from the beginning of June. Using water recycled from the nursery roofs make so much sense from an ecological point of view, but we're also looking forward to the benefits of working with rainwater in the nursery. Rainwater is less chlorinated than mains water and the lower levels of salts and calcium help plants absorb nutrients better and grow stronger and more resilient to pest attack.

New drainage pipes to collect rainwater from the nursery roofs; Diggers at work;

As the days get longer, its such a pleasure to be working in the nursery. The sun hasn't seemed to stop shining for the last couple of weeks and with mother's day round the corner our nursery is crammed to the rafters with loads of beautiful plants. Clematis, dipladenia, bougainvillea and primulas all look fantastic en mass but it's the jasmine pyramids that are really stealing the show and making us smile with their heady perfume.

Stunning Clematis Wesselton; Jasmine polyanthum filling the nursery with scent;

There is still time to order your own Mothers Day gifts. Just order online or by phone by the 1st April, choose Friday 1st or Saturday 2nd April for delivery and we'll take care of the rest.

January 2011 - Happy New Year!

First of all a really big thank you to our couriers for their heroic efforts during the ice and snow in December. They were working round the clock to ensure that despite the worst weather on record, over 90% of our christmas deliveries were received on time and over 99% by Christmas. In some areas of the country temperatures were down as low as -20C so we do know that a few plants got a bit cold in transit. If you are worried that your christmas present was one of these then please do get in touch on 01825 721162

2ft snow at our nursery in December; Daffodils pushing through the leaf litter;

But now it's time to look ahead to a brand new year, with the mornings feeling lighter already and the first optimistic spring bulbs pushing their heads above the soil. With Christmas out of the way and some space cleared in the nursery it's now time to get sowing in earnest! We have already sown the first early apache and twilight chilli plants which are coming up nicely and this year we are expanding our range of homegrown flowering plants to include pretty blue plumbagos and streptocarpus as well as the geraniums, passion flowers, balloon flowers and angels trumpets that we grew last year.

Apache and chilli seedlings well under way in the propagation area; Spring colour in the nursery Jan 11

And with our spring bulbs and planters coming into flower it feels like spring is already on it's way...

At Plants4Presents we are always on the lookout for ways to help the environment and when the opportunity came up to help local schools by donating trees to 'Walk to school month' we jumped at the chance.

This fantastic competition was organised and run by East Sussex County Council across schools in the county in October to encourage pupils to find more environmentally friendly ways to get to school. Over 60 schools took part in the scheme and at the end of the month the school in each borough that showed the greatest increase in sustainable journeys, was awarded a collection of native trees to plant in their grounds. With the snow and ice now cleared, East Sussex County Council have finally been able to collect these 280 oak, birch, wild cherry and rowan trees and will be planting them out over the next few weeks. The 3-4ft tree saplings were all grown here at our nursery in sussex and we are absolutely delighted to have been able to help with such a worthy scheme.

Sussex county council collecting trees for walk to school month; Julie taking thyme cuttings

Nursery News - November 2010

Well a lot has been going on since our last update. The winter really feels like it's kicking in with dark days and a lot of November rain! Christmas is now just around the corner and with that in mind we've been working hard to introduce a new 'my account' facility to help make ordering that little bit quicker and easier for our regular customers. More about my account.

We've also got some changes to the layout of the website and a new simpler plant search facility in the pipeline so look out for these changes over the next couple of weeks.

As well as introducing new web features, we've also been busy expanding our range of christmas plants with new Amaryllis colours, gold bowls of hyacinths and both indoor and outdoor planted baskets. We've got some lovely camellias back in for the winter and pretty xmas cactus trios, anthurium and azaleas all looking good this month and of course a full range of festive plants available here

Pink and white indoor winter planter ; pretty christmas cactus

We will be taking orders for christmas delivery right up until December 22nd but don't forget if you are after something specific, please do order and reserve your plants in advance to avoid disappointment. Chilli plants in particular are likely to be sell out this year so do get in and reserve yours nice and early.

Many of you will have received a christmas card from us in the last week or so and these mark the introduction of a whole range of brand new greeting cards for Christmas 2010 and beyond. The new greeting cards are even larger than our previous cards and at A5 size there is plenty of room to fit your handwritten messages. Printed on uncoated recycled card they are still as eco as possible but exclusive to P4P they use images of our own plants and the sussex countryside - we hope you like them!

Chilli Plant Gifts ; our new Holly Christmas Card

Nursery News - September 2010

After four years in Sussex, we have made much progress in renovating the plant nursery, but we still have many plans for improving and redeveloping the glasshouses. In August after much consultation, we finally obtained planning permission for a dedicated nursery reservoir. With water such a scare commodity it seems only sensible to collect and reuse the water from our 2 acre roof. This will make us much more self-sufficient in case of drought but also everything we can do to collect and recycle rainwater reduces the pressure on domestic supplies. If the last 10 years are anything to go by water is likely to be an important issue in the years to come and with our annual usage at 6000 cubic metres our own reservoir seems the obvious answer. Of course this is a big project and we are aiming to start the actual work next spring so in the meantime it's time to ready the nursery for the winter months....

With such a cold winter last year and the old nursery boiler running at maximum capacity, we decided it was time to update the system and we have great hopes for our new much more energy efficient air heater. Not only will the greater heat output allow us to develop more specialist areas for winter tropicals like anthuriums and poinsettias but the warm air overflow is going to be very welcome at 6am in the Christmas packing rush!

the site of the planned reservoir; our new air heater

And in fact Christmas is creeping up fast! In September we have been busy potting up this years hyacinth planters and Amaryllis bulbs and are looking forward to a busy festive season. Our full christmas range including new delivery services to the Republic of Ireland and Northern Europe will be launched on the website by the end of October.

But if you just can't wait to get in the festive spirit - view a sneak preview of our christmas plants here

New Season autumn cyclamen; gold hyacinth bowls now planted ready for christmas flowering

Nursery News - June 2010

Wow - what a busy start to the year! With heavy snow and freezing temperatures in January and February, we had to replace over 200 panes of glass and no sooner were the repairs complete then the growing season began in earnest.

4ft of snow caused a lot of glass damage this winter; patio veg plants growing on in the nursery

Following on from a successful year last year, March 2010 was our busiest month ever with over 2,000 plants despatched for Mother's day. A nice steady stream of orders since then has allowed us to introduce some more help on the customer support side with our newest staff member Debbie joining the team in April.

May, with it's warmer weather and longer days is the month when the plants really get going and the grapevines, kiwis and courgette plants in particular appeared to be growing on by the hour! This meant all handson deck in May to repot the much larger range of plants we are growing in house this year.

Dormant grapevines in February; 3 months later these hardy grapevines are already 3ft tall

Now at long last we are through the sowing and potting rush and it's time to look again at the website and plans for the future. We hope those of you who received the new catalogue found it useful and we will be doing another mini brochure for christmas if you or anyone you know would like one then please contact us.

As part of the ongoing aim to always provide the most accurate pictures of our plants, we have just invested in a flash new camera for close up shots... check out the bees enjoying our lavender this week!

busy bees on the hidcote lavender; a riot of summer colour

History of the Nursery

Plants4Presents was founded and launched in 2004 and since then has steadily grown on year by year. We have been at our present site just outside Newick in East Sussex since September 2006 but it has taken nearly 3 years to adapt the old chrysanthemum nursery to our needs and reclaim all the areas that had been left empty. Because we sell everything from hardy camellias and bay trees to tender houseplants and orchids we have had to adapt different areas to provide the best growing conditions. Last year we introduced two cool growing areas to compliment the heated propagation areas and just this spring we were delighted to finish our custom made outside area for the roses and hardy native trees.

Roses and Cherry trees in the spring sunshine; Oak trees and farmers lemons in the new outside area

From this two acre site in the heart of East Sussex we also operate three sister companies - Fletching Glasshouses - which grows and supplies a range of organic salad and vegetables to local shops and box schemes the Intelligent Garden which supplies all kinds of useful tools for gardeners and www.ladybirdplantcare.co.uk - which supplies organic pest controls and predators by mail order. This combination of horticultural businesses works well together and we are able to 'borrow' skilled staff from the nursery side to help out at peak times on Plants4Presents.

Unfortunately our nursery is very much mail order and we are not open to the public - sorry!