Shropshire Magazine

Christine and Nick with a Gold Medal at the Chelsea Flower Show.

By Ken Tudor

It’s one of the great stories of the horticultural world – how a Shropshire farmer’s daughter fell in love at college and came home with a husband to set up one of Britain’s top nurseries on the family farm.

The now-famous couple, Christine and Nick Ffoulkes Jones, started in a small way on the farm at Kinnerley and started their rise to a Chelsea Flower Show gold with a stall on the local market.

Now Hall Farm Nursery is one of the most acclaimed nurseries of its type – winning more than 40 gold medals at some of Britain’s top national and regional shows.

And when the Ffoulkes Joneses won the greatest of them all, a gold at Chelsea, it was a hugely proud moment for the couple, who have produced one of the greatest catalogues of herbaceous plants in the country.

The dedicated duo are renowned for their annual exquisitely designed displays at some of the UK’s top shows, including those at Shrewsbury, Malvern, Hampton Court and Tatton Park.

Their gold-medal displays are more than just a selection of quality plants from Hall Farm; there is creativity, originality and sheer class about the plant collection and its eye-catching presentation.

Every display has the highest quality of plants knitting together to create one of those special exhibits, every single time.

The successful Hall Farm Nurseries, created and developed by Christine and Nick Ffoulkes Jones.

The couple work together to select plants and incorporate them into their framework of a water feature, pathway and a few artifacts. In go the quality plants such as Hosta ‘Veronica Lake’, Iris laevigata ‘Variegata’, Kniphofia rooperi or the stunning Lilium nepalense.

“But it is Nick who is the brilliant finisher and really makes the stand special,” says Christine. “Long after I have finished Nick still works to make it as perfect as possible and it is this attention to detail that wins gold medals.”

Their creative skills come to life, too, in the nursery’s display borders, where mature plants allow customers to visualise plants and combinations in their own gardens.

It is remarkable that 98 per cent of the plants for sale are propagated and grown-on at the nursery. “The only ones we do not grow ourselves are those covered by plant breeder’s rights,” says Nick. It is fascinating, too, that all these wonderful plants which wow the gardening world are all grown in Hall Farm’s extremely successful, bark-based potting compost.

They mix up the bark with slow-release fertilisers – and Christine shyly admits a couple of secret ingredients – on a nursery run on organic principles with no sprays against pests on the site.

“We actually do not have a lot of pests because we keep everything under control and have everywhere neat and tidy and clean,” says Christine, pointing around her at the spotless greenhouses and poly-tunnels.

“And when plants like lupins are known for their awful aphid problems we get over the situation by not growing them at all,” she adds.

The nursery’s 50-page catalogue reads like an A–Y list of the UK’s loveliest herbaceous plants, running from achillea, actea and adenphora, through delightful diascias and glorious geraniums, and on through the liliums which are a big feature at Hall Farm these days.

The alphabet of awesome plants continues with pretty primulas and pulmonarias, through verbena and violas, to reach the ypsilandro, which apparently has bottlebrush blooms in the spring. The catalogue is a fascinating booklet, an education for those keen, keen people seeking descriptions of species and varieties and the cultural advice on how best to grow them.

Christine enjoys meeting enthusiastic beginners and discussing ways of getting the most from plants. It is the same at shows. I have seen her talk for hours on end to keen enthusiasts thirsting for knowledge.

“We do get a lot of people who come along and have a chat and buy a plant and then come back again and again to build a collection,” she says.

And in the close-knit Shropshire countryside Christine is often approached by people who respect what she has achieved, and just let out that they remember her on the market.

It has been a long, hard road over the 21 years since Christine and Nick set up the small nursery in a corner of the farm on which her family had farmed for more than 250 years.

An award-winning exhibition display by the Ffoulkes Joneses.

“It was on the farm that I learned to love flowers,” recalls Christine. “I remember walking the lanes and admiring the wild flowers and I was forever doing botanical drawings.”

Now thousands of gardeners find their way to the nursery at Kinnerley, just off the A5, nestling in the network of lanes in the triangle between Shrewsbury, Oswestry and Welshpool.

Amazingly all the plants sold at Hall Farm Nursery are tested in three very different garden situations, first in the nursery’s heavy, silty clay soil. “They are also tested in our garden which has draining, sandy soil, and in my parents’ garden which is 1,000 feet above sea level in damp North Wales!” he says.

“So customers can be certain that a plant’s hardiness and ability to grow in a range of conditions has been thoroughly tested before it is given the go-ahead to appear in the sale beds.”

As well as the day-to-day running of the nursery and attendance at RHS shows, Christine gives a series of talks at the nursery for individuals and independent groups.

Already this year there have been three on perennials and herbaceous plants and on April 5 there is an RHS event entitled ‘Spring Perennials’, another on ‘Perfect Perennial Partners’ on April 26 and ‘Creative Combinations’ on May 24.

There will also be talks on herbs, summer perennials, flower painting, garden grasses and autumn perennials later in the year.

As I leave after a fascinating afternoon I ask when the first show of the year is. Christine says it is just a few weeks ahead at Malvern, but I see no show plants waiting to put on a gold-medal display.

“We don’t have special plants set aside as show plants – we pick them from the stock we have on sale,” she says.

And that, as they say, says it all. That the show team has the confidence to go out and pick specimens from the sales area for a top show is remarkable – and is the final confirmation that Hall Farm is a class place.

• Hall Farm Nursery, Vicarage Lane, Kinnerley, near Oswestry SY10. Visit their website at www.hallfarmnursery.co.uk