RHS Chelsea Flower Show (24th – 28th May 2022), formerly known as the Great Spring Show is back this year after being cancelled in 2020 and moved to September in 2021 due to pandemic restrictions.
“The world’s greatest flower show reveals cutting-edge garden design, fabulous floral displays and simply the best shopping.”
Horticultural specialists, plant nurseries and designers from all over the world compete to get a coveted Chelsea gold medal. Royalty, TV gardeners and celebrities mingle with thousands of the public check out what the latest trend in gardening is.
Any keen gardener relies on garden centres these days for buying plants, flowers, shrubs and trees. These retail outlets are getting bigger and bigger and the merchandise on offer ever more extensive. From annuals to plant in a window box to mature trees; sheds through to outside leisure spaces; a garden gnome or a life-size sculpture, can all be found in our local garden centre. Many a weekend is spent browsing and dreaming in these horticultural havens. The restrictions and the impact of the pandemic has meant that even more of us are turning towards the benefits of gardening in all manner of ways.
Dorset History Centre holds the Stewarts of Ferndown archives. Stewarts are believed to be the first nursery to open a garden centre in the country.
The Stewarts family business began in Dundee and records show that they started in the forestry trade as far back as 1742. In 1864 David Stewart moved down south to open a branch in Ferndown. The climate was warmer, and they could concentrate on less hardy plants. Initially the business mainly focused on landscaping tennis courts and golf courses.
Edward (Ted) Stewart was a pilot flying Mosquito aircraft in Burma in the latter part of WW2. His passion for flying took him all over the world after the war, keen to investigate different methods of horticulture. On one of his trips to Toronto in 1953 he discovered the idea of ‘Garden Centres’, and the containerisation of plants. Growing plants in containers and leaving their root system untouched meant that plants, shrubs and trees had a longer ‘shelf’ life and, in theory, they could be kept alive for much longer. Prior to this any business selling plants had a much shorter season. This concept changed the whole industry.
An article in the Sunday Times (28th May 1972) acknowledges that it was Edward Stewart (only son of AF Martin Stewart) who should be credited with this initiative. He changed in one action, the whole horticultural industry.
Stewarts opened their first garden centre in 1955 in adapted sheds in Ferndown and went on to open the first garden centre in Britain, ‘Garden-Lands’ in Christchurch (1961), with Percy Thrower, one of the first TV gardeners, there to open it.
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Even prior to this however, Stewarts had been regular attendees at Chelsea, including 1952 when Queen Elizabeth II began her reign.
The Stewarts of Ferndown archive not only contains numerous brochures of the plant stock the nursery grew but also photo albums of Ted’s exploits in WW2 and the development of a successful, local business.
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Martin Stewart, the current owner, is proud of their roots, stating on their website:-
“We are rightly proud of our history. It’s amazing, not only for the fact that the business has remained within the same family for over 275 years, but also for the amount of historical material that has been saved during that time.
However, we remain a business, and the fact remains that in commerce a ‘nice’ history counts for nothing (just consider Barings Bank).
A history will always remain a ‘nice to have’, it does not guarantee us a future. We need to understand that.
We hope you enjoy reading about it.
– Martin Stewart
You can learn more about Stewarts via their website: https://www.stewarts.co.uk
I attended a talk you gave on your family and how Stewarts grew from WW2 so very interesting
This was fascinating. I come from Devon & this is a garden centre I always visit when nearby. It has many happy memories as well. I do remember a tv programme a long time ago about its history, equally fascinating. Has anyone ever produced a dvd on this? Or has all that film been lost over years?