DO YOU SELL LUPINS?

Individual Plants Nursery specialises in growing rare, unusual, quirky weirdo plants that you won’t generally find in the garden centre or other nurseries. I am however beginning to expand my plant range to include more good, hardy, garden plants of more uncommon species/cultivars. I may occasionally stock Lupin family members, just not the big eejits.

WHERE DO YOU SOURCE YOUR PLANTS?

Individual Plants Nursery has been developing its stock now for around four years. Every year I source seed from ethical seed collectors/suppliers around the globe to build on my plant catalogue. I grow for my nursery stock and to add to my parent plant collection for future nursery propagation. Because of my love of propagation there will always be new varieties of unusual plants added every year.

HOW SUSTAINABLE IS INDIVIDUAL PLANTS NURSERY?

I am an advocate for growing using organic principles. Although the nursery isn’t certified as organic, as ludicrously this involves a yearly cost and lengthy process that I just can’t afford right now.

Individual Plants Nursery uses certified organic peat-free composts, is pesticide free (only uses the squeeze/splat on rare occasions) herbicide/fungicide free and only uses responsibly sourced, certified organic feeds, sparingly.

I also maintain the nursery site for ecology incorporating native meadow on a large percentage of the land with chunks of natural scrub and implement “selective weeding” to maintain a ground cover of native plants in my stock beds. I am also in the process of clearing invasive cherry Laurel and Rhododendron ponticum from the woodland that flanks my site.

Individual Plants Nursery has a “no plastic off-site” policy for mail order items, uses recycled/recyclable pots and is in the process of developing “bare root” growing beds that will enable Individual Plants Nursery to offer bare-root ornamental plants in the near future.

I produce all my plants from seed or cuttings, propagated on-site here in Lismore. As a result there are very few “miles” on the plants.

DO YOU SHIP OUTSIDE OF IRELAND?

Unfortunately not. Brexit and all that and shipping to mainland Europe is too expensive. I DO ship to Northern Ireland though, so yay!

CAN I VISIT INDIVIDUAL PLANTS NURSERY?

For the moment I’m not open to the public due to the constraints of my nursery site. However, you can find me around the country all through the growing season and I have a pop-up stall on the last Saturday of the month through the summer here in Lismore at a Lismore Health Store. Please see my “Find Me” page to see details.

HOW BIG ARE YOUR PLANTS?

I grow and sell young plants and try to sell plants at the 9cm liner stage. I do not sell plants until they are well rooted and ready to start moving on. This means plant costs are kept down and 9cm sized plants quickly catch up and settle better into your garden conditions in the long run. Nearer the end of the season plants may be in 1ltr or 2ltr sized pots.

ARE YOUR PLANTS HARDY?

I grow a good proportion of “borderline hardy”, drought tolerant, Mediterranean climate plants but I’m diversifying my range to include hardier, garden plants. Many of my borderline hardy plants though are perfectly hardy in most Irish conditions with some maturity and correct growing conditions and almost all of them do fine through winter in an unheated poly-tunnel or glasshouse to keep the cold WET off.

Borderline hardy is classed as anything hardy down to minus 5-10 degrees (when in the correct conditions). It’s not as difficult as people think to keep cool stuff alive though! I grow my plants “hard” and don’t over-mollycoddle them so they will have a good degree of resilience to temperature fluctuations and shouldn’t cack it at the first shock if they get caught out.

DO YOU SELL NATIVES?

I have been asked if I supply natives and the answer is, not currently, due to the restrictions of my site and lack of space. Sourcing seed/plants that have been grown local to you is probably the very best way to bolster up true native populations since phenotypes in plant communities become hugely specified to their locations. For instance, a native plant grown down here in Lismore from Lismore collected seed might show different levels of adaptation (hardiness/drought tolerance etc) to plants naturally occurring in Mullingar. The easiest thing to do is to research how to create the conditions in your garden that encourage the natural seed-bank in your soil to have a chance to establish and see what comes up before adding to it and be patient!

WHAT GOT YOU INTO PLANTS?

Like most people my gateway into growing was through vegetables which I have grown all my adult life, my Gran influenced that! My real love of “ornamental” plants though began during my (almost decade) working at Lismore Castle Gardens. My boss at the time Darren Topps was a great mentor and that’s where I really got hooked on propagation and unusual plants.