The Red Shed
North hardy plant nursery – designed for forest gardens
Newsflash- the full story
We are delighted to announce the Red Shed Nursery is moving.
A little history, a little of the present and a little of the future are needed to understand this announcement.
Our original nursery started at Tweed Horizons, Newtown St Boswells, Roxburghshire over twenty years ago. As our central propagation unit we ordered (to our own design) a greenhouse/toolshed from the outstanding dutch light builders Perity’s of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. Built in long lasting red cedar. The business at the time was called Garden of Scotland. In 1999 we closed the business after failing to get security of tenure on the land we had from Scottish Enterprise. But the shed travelled home with us.
For ten years it sat stacked outside our house until we restored and rebuilt it in our garden over a period of two years and restarted the nursery after many other entrepreneurial adventures. And the new business was named THE RED SHED after its iconic centre piece.
Since then we have sold top fruit trees (apples, pears, plums, cherries, quinces) soft fruits (black white and red currants, blackberries, gooseberries, jostaberries, worcesterberries, strawberries, raspberries, and other hybrid berries) perennial salads, herbs and perennial flowers (many of them edible), green manures and native trees and nut trees. In fact everything you need to bring a forest garden to life.
North hardy? What does that mean. Well when you go to your local commercial nursery most of the staff have no idea about plants… and most of their plants have been cosseted in polytunnels etc, so don’t be surprised when they peg out at the first sign of weather. Apart from some early generation under glass for some ours spend their lives outdoors in real Scottish weather so they really are hardy. It rarely gets below -25C here. But every year is different… Trust us. Our plants are hardy. And we do know all about them.
Well we were talking about history… During this time we have welcomed a thousand visitors a year and usually fed them from the garden. Our courses have been busy here teaching forest gardening, permaculture, food preservation and much more. Our visitors mostly come from Scotland and as far south as Derbyshire but we have had people from all over the UK, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Canada, Brazil, all over Europe…
BUT we are not as young as we once were. There isn’t enough room here to do the nursery justice and in a residential area with listed buildings we cannot be overtly commercial. So we are very privileged to have found a new owner for the enterprise. Kate Everett lives at Inverquiech by Alyth in Perthshire, nestling at the foot of Glen Isla. Going south and east from here you find the rich productive lands which flow down to the Carse of Gowrie… historical heartland of Scotland’s fruit industry.
The business will keep the name THE RED SHED. The original Red Shed is staying where it is, but Kate has built a new one as a service base for the nursery, and feels the business will complement her existing work in designing sustainable land use, end products being salads in season for local and distant customers, the ability to grow all your own food (literally), and an innovative pasture management system of holistic mob grazing with horses. It is a site with historical treasures stretching back to the Iron Age and amazing cultural inheritance.
The stock of the nursery is moving there starting November 2nd this year. Initially online sales will stay on our website, but collections will be from Alyth and hence deliveries from there too. Kate welcomes enquiries and orders direct also. Over time the whole management will be transferred. Some people have said (hearing the news) you must be sad! Or relieved! Not at all. I am delighted because I know that Kate and her helpers will take this innovative and brilliant nursery to the next level where it needs to go. And she will have our ongoing support as she learns the ropes.
Great things will happen.
Graham Bell
graham@grahambell.org http://www. grahambell.org
01890 88 2448
Kate Everett
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1588876108066751
01828 632463 / 07543 643703
