How We Produce Our Plants

Most of the plants that we sell online, we grow ourselves wherever possible.
We produce - or 'propagate' - all our plants in the nursery in one of three ways : from cuttings, from tissue culture, and from seed.

 

Most of our plants are grown from cuttings.

This is a carefully-chosen section of plant shoot tip, plant stem, or occasionally root, which produces plants which are identical to the parent.

It preserves the attributes the parent is grown for - such as flower colour, plant height, or vigour.

Sometimes suitable cuttings can only be taken at certain times of year, for example when the plant has stopped flowering and is producing leafy shoots rather than buddy ones.

This means supply of those plants will be seasonal, depending on when we can take cuttings.

 

Some of our plants are grown from tissue culture.

It may seem obvious, but we can only take stem or root cuttings from plants which produce suitable stems or roots.
Plants which aren't shrubby or don't have a network of roots, we can't take a cutting from.

Tissue culture is also useful for propagating plants we can't take cuttings from year-round; it means we can extend the length of time you are able to buy these plants.

Tissue culture produces plants which are identical to the parent.

Tissue culture production is a very precise, expensive, and skilled process.
The resulting plantlets are grown in laboratory conditions during the early weeks, which means the process is best for plants that a re tricky to grow from cuttings; and rare and unusual plants.

You can find out more about the specialised process of tissue culture at the VitroFlora website

 

We grow a few plants from seed.

Other nurseries may grow more plants from seed as it is cheaper than cuttings - but it can produce weaker plants, plants that don't look like the parent, and plants that flower a lot later in life than cuttings-grown ones.

We're different. We produce seed-grown plants only where this technique reliably produces plants identical to the parent (like native grass trees); or where a little variability in height or colour is a desirable attribute.

If plants are grown from seed, we state this on the product page so you know there will be natural variation for that plant.