CONTACT DETAILS

 Tel:         07850 328756.

 Email: office@botanicnursery.co.uk

The nursery...
Good gardening is about harmony with nature (although maybe not slugs), the Botanic Nursery gives you everything you need to grow great plants. Here you can find information on the large range of plants we grow, general gardening advice and purchase our plants and seeds online.
We are proud to hold the national collection of foxgloves as well as a wide range of plants, rare shrubs and garden favourites such as hollyhocks, Asters and and Peonies including those from the Jim Archibald collection.
On our site you can find inspiration and advice on general gardening and growing from seed as well as our wide range of plants and seeds available to buy online. We hope you enjoy browsing. We aim to continually develop this site to offer useful gardening advice and seasonal tips on a range of gardening topics as well as bring you all the latest news and information from the Botanic Nursery. If there is anything you would like us to add please let us know via our email. If you like what you see why not give the nursery a visit!  

The Botanic Nursery is Europe’s leading authority on Digitalis (Foxgloves) and holders of the National Collection for Plant Heritage.

The plants and seeds we offer are the finest forms available, if we can advise on planting or cultivation please ask.

The foxglove, so much a part of our British Countryside, is perhaps one of the few native plants to be well received in gardens. They do seem to have the ability to spring up almost unnoticed that is until their towering stems dominate the garden. Once there few gardeners have the heart to remove them, thus ensuring more in future seasons, for foxgloves are great seeders.

Most foxgloves prefer a well-drained good garden soil in full sun or part shade. A few varieties like a sunnier situation. They are trouble free under good cultivation. Our native foxglove Digitalis purpurea is the best known in cultivation. There are 25 other species and distinct geographic or varietal forms found throughout Central and Southern Europe. The last few years have seen a tremendous increase in the popularity of foxgloves; unfortunately this has caused a rash of trendy names for plants, some of which are already known in cultivation.

Biennial Foxgloves have a two year life cycle, they spend the first year growing basal a rosette of foliage from which the flowering stems appear in the second year. Biennial Foxgloves are great seeders, the spent flowering stems can be cut and as the seed dries may be and shaken into other areas of the garden, choose light open areas of undisturbed ground. In order to ensure a stand of your favourite colours plant the same sort two years in succession his will introduce the dominant colour you want. However over time the purple native forms may come back. White flowered ones can be encouraged by pulling up any young plants that have a purple suffusion to the back of the young leaves

Perennial Foxgloves usually have a 3-4 year life span many come true, harvest the seed and sow it to ensure many more for years to come. Some perennial foxgloves are long lived but are sterile so produce no seed and require splitting every couple of years to rejunvinate. After flowering cut everything down almost to the ground, allow the regrowth to appear and then divide up like a cake. Or take little heel cuttings of soft growth taken from near the flower stem near the base growth of the parent plant. (Earlier heel cuttings can also be taken of lateral stems from a flowering stem) Plants such as:
Digitalis purpurea ‘Serendipity’
Digitalis polkadot series
Digitalis ‘Glory of Roundway’
Digitalis ‘Illuminator series’