Time to call it a day…

Rising running costs, cut-price rivals, and a series of disappointing summers have conspired to spell the end for a family-run Shropshire garden business with nearly half a century of history.

After 44 years in business it has come down to six words chalked on a board. It reads: “Closing down sale - everything must go.”

The words spell the end of an era for one of Shropshire’s longest running family-run garden businesses, Watkins Nurseries and Garden Centre in Apley Castle, Telford. Rising costs and a string of dreadful summers are behind the reason that the Watkins family have decided to call it a day.

The seeds of a formerly blossoming venture were planted in 1964 by Alfred Watkins, who had to give up his job as a herdsman through ill health, and being a champion chrysanthemum grower decided to risk his arm by turning his hobby into a business.

He seized the opportunity and bought the land that had formerly been the walled kitchen garden for Apley Castle, along with the adjoining house, and began growing flowers, bedding and vegetable plants.

Dedication came in spades.

“He did a milk round to supplement his hours here so he used to get up at 3am and work until 2pm then return and start work here,” says his wife Una.

“He worked 18 hours a day and he never used to come on holiday with us but used to take us and then come back here. And the kids - they would help and work like Trojan horses after school. They had to clear it of weeds and dig out the rows of fruit trees.”

Soon the business was growing nicely and Alfred and the family would be seen tootling to and from Wellington market in their old Bedford van, loaded with produce to sell on the stall that Una and the children ran there.

At its peak the nursery was producing 25,000 chrysanthemums for the season, along with roses, shrubs and fruit trees - all of which would be delivered to the market.

“Halfway through the day we used to ring up the nursery and say ‘We’ve run out, dig some more up’,” Una remembers.

“We used to sell out so quickly, you would have people queueing up at 8am and we’d be sold out by 11.30am.”

In the days when big companies had gardening clubs, Watkins Nursery was supplying the likes of GKN Sankey with seeds.

But the nature of gardening itself has changed. Many people don’t have the time or the inclination to delve their fingers into the earth.

“Things are very different,” says Andrew. “At one time people would come down and buy 40 or 50 boxes of bedding plants and bed the whole garden but now it’s ‘What can I get in a pot’?”

The business has been the livelihood of three generations of the Watkins family: Alfred and his wife Una, their five children, and today it is run by their son Andrew and his brother-in-law Clive Harrison who now employ their daughters.

Andrew, now 47, was only knee-high to a geranium and grew up among the bedding plants.

He says: “I don’t remember anything apart from this place. It’s all I knew. We used to sit down in the shed and make the wooden seed trays out of old fish boxes. It used to stink. But it was a labour of love and you had to like doing it. That was a good example of recycling and there were a lot of things we used to recycle - in the winter we used to sit down and wash all the flowerpots and used them again the following year.”

Una adds: “His grandad used to keep them in clothes. If his trousers wore out his grandmother would cut them up and make a pair of trousers for one of the children.”

Andrew continues: “It was great as a kid here, there was nothing here apart from us and the farm and we used to have tree houses in the woods - but mainly just helping out with the nursery.”

The family element of the business was the driving force, says Una.

“There was us and five children and they all came into the business. We did it for love. We couldn’t afford to pay other people for the hours this lot put in.”

Andrew adds: “We were the only nursery in Wellington and this is the reason why we are calling it a day now because there are so many. And it’s hard to compete with bigger garden centres.”

The Watkins family have built their reputation on quality, but with rising energy and fuel costs they have struggled to compete on cut-price terms. And the weather has been the final straw.

Andrew says: “We rely on the weather and if you get it right in April, May and June you could make enough money to keep going for the rest of the season, but for the last four years we have had bad weather. The weather has been changing, I don’t care what people say. We’ve had rain but not in that quantity.”

But the Watkins family have plenty of happy memories and they’ve certainly had their quota of high drama among the potted plants.

Andrew recalls: “We used to have topsoil delivered to make our compost and we’d have it tipped outside. One time there was a hand grenade in it and they had to call the bomb people out.”

Una adds: “It will be a sad day when we close. It doesn’t really help that my husband is in hospital and does not know about it.”

She explains that Alfred, now aged 77, has recently suffered a couple of strokes and his memory is failing.

“There’s not a lot of point in telling him. He will never know.”