R.G.U.E
Owning and running a nursery is a lot of work. It’s hugely enjoyable but it’s a fairly demanding sometimes thankless endeavour. It’s easy to understand then why some growers resort to buying their stock in from elsewhere and grow it on, either as plugs or sometimes even full sized plants that sit in the nursery for a week before being flogged on with 200% mark-up. Old school nursery skills are dying off and nurseries that truly do produce EVERYTHING on-site from stock-beds and seed seems to be getting rarer. Of course, everyone needs to make a living but I wonder who is driving the “market trend” that makes anyone selling anything that isn’t a Lupin pumped full of NPK and sprayed to fuck with anti-fungals, pushed to the sidelines.
Growing “on-site” is time consuming and needs a bit of space before having a saleable plant, add to that the fact that if you go peat-free, pesticide free and inorganic feed free your work can be extra demanding. It seems to me that anyone who runs a nursery this way seems to genuinely love working with plants and are happy to take the time, it’s a shame then when I see properly small growers shutting shop from lack of support by the gatekeepers to the industry who seem to have a pathological preference of only promoting and supporting industrial scale, mass producers who flood garden centres, public planting projects and design projects with the same old shite! Grown the same old shite way.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if garden centres sourced their material from local growers, or even better, just kept away from the plants and concentrated on the other shit they do, like sell coffee and sub-standard tools. That one act would make people visit their local nurseries to find plants which would instantly boost local grower’s sales and perhaps force people into thinking about plants differently, learning new things and opening up an amazing variety of genera that they’ve never been exposed to, aswell as free growers up by allowing them to grow the plants they actually enjoy producing thus creating a world where plants are sold by people who are absolutely excited and proud about what they’re producing. It’s akin to how supermarkets have completely removed everyone from their food by telling people how it should look and be presented and packaged… Anyway, I’m twitchy today and impulsive;
Who’s up for setting up a new organisation made of purely on-site producers of plants? I’ve got shit-tons of stuff to do, but fuck-it! I’m up for the challenge of creating something with a good ethos to hopefully help all of us small guys up and out! If we’re going to be “gatekept”, lets just kick the fucking walls down instead.
The caveats are thus (off the top of my head);
Members must only produce on-site from their own grown stock.
Members MUST grow sustainably. Peat-free, zero non-organic sprays/feeds.. obviously there’s no way of proving this unless you’re organic certified, but this thing is based on trust and members not being dickheads.
Priority will be given to members who specialise in weird shit, though obviously there’s room for everyone, but we need to keep quality of content in mind and not have endless bedding and supermarket plants (Think Choice)!
The aim of the thing will be;
To try and sort out venues for plant fairs
Our fairs will act partly to spread knowledge and educate people on how and why to grow the cool shit we produce, members are encouraged to hold a small talk at their stand during the fairs about their plants/growing sustainably etc.
There will be a very cool user-friendly website.. somehow.. with loads of info, links etc. fees can be discussed, but fees will only cover essentials (website/insurance/advertising) not be used as anyone’s profits.
Eccentricity is encouraged. Our fairs will be quirky, vibrant, fun.. think spontaneous dancing, occasional nudity, music, wrap parties, unlicensed tattooing, you know the vibe! Cool stall presentation encouraged, we support each other, punch up not down (or sideways)
Our organisation will be punk, inclusive to all and everyone, with zero room for ego bollocks or one-up-manship. It will be anti-establishment, un-twee, gnarley, slightly unhinged and GLORIOUS. Plant sales as festival.
Let’s do a thing people! We’ll all be dead soon! I’m serious! (click on the link to message me), the industry needs a kicking!
Named something like:
R.G.U.E
Rogue Growers Union Eire
(or some shit)
