Wall to Wall Plants is a family run specialist plant nursery located near the village of Wall, the site of the Roman settlement of Letocetum, just south of Lichfield, Staffordshire in the UK. The Nursery business is run by Peter who looks after the plants and their well being and all updates to the website, whilst Selena deals with the logistics and all admin.

The team are passionate about growing and propagating their own stock on site using peat-free compost and organic fertilisers and this year they finally open their doors online! A key aspect is their focus on customer service backed by a no-quibble guarantee.

Background: You could say Peter has always had an affiliation with gardening since his childhood days, where he grew up in the Derbyshire Dales on a fairly sizeable small holding. Both his Grandfather and Father were avid gardeners and lived off the land extensively. Fruit and vegetables were aplenty, and nothing got wasted. What didn’t get eaten was pickled down and stored for later use or sold at the local market where they had a small stall.

Propagation was also high on the agenda. The Smith family were big fans of Dahlia’s and Chrysanthemums and would always take cuttings to extend their stock of gorgeous blooms. Being frugal was part of daily life back then and grabbing as many seeds from within their own garden for next year’s harvest was a must!

Unbeknown to Peter, he grew up learning lots of skills around horticulture as he was always encouraged to run his own plot, growing plants from seed, pricking out and nurturing them on. Sometimes it was pure hard graft, helping out lifting and dividing perennials in the spring, mowing the lawns, weeding and ongoing general maintenance.

Later in life, interest in gardening diminished as Peter went off to have his own career in the Armed Forces. Then they resurfaced again back in the late 90’s when he was lucky enough to meet up with Richard Emeny shortly after his appearance on Gardeners World in 1999. 

Richard had a successful exotic plant business at the time, and he was certainly a real influence. In 2007 Peter and his family moved to their current home and Richard joked at the time about him starting his own nursery as the new home had the space and scope do something along the same lines of his own business. They even came up with the name ‘Wall to Wall Plants’, derived from living so near to the village of Wall! And now, Peter’s knowledge, experience and enthusiasm of all thing’s plants has been revitalised again with this new venture.

Why now: The nursery has been established to offer customers something different with access to plants you don’t necessarily see in a traditional garden centre. The aim is to inspire gardeners to support their passion in growing and maintaining their very own amazing green spaces using ‘easy to maintain’ planting schemes to suit a wide range of garden aspects.

The nursery is 100% peat-free and at all times ensures waste is kept to a minimum, and in particular plastic pots are re-cycled. In the short term the aim is to move to biodegradable coir products which are natural and more sustainable.