Plant nursery
Johnsons of Whixley is one of the longest established and largest commercial plant nurseries in Europe and is the largest supplier to the amenity sector in the UK. On this page, we’d like to provide you with some general information on plant nurseries for a better understanding of our processes.
Plant nursery processes
A plant nursery often grows various plants (e.g. amenity plants, specimen plants, container plants, garden plants) in a greenhouse, a building of glass or in plastic tunnels, designed to protect young plants from harsh weather, especially frost, while allowing access to light and ventilation. Johnsons is a wholesale plant nursery and mainly sells their products to retail nurseries and landscape gardeners; mainly through contract growing. For that purpose, Johnsons’ has seven production sites through which they can meet the stock demands of other plant nurseries and landscape gardeners.Plant care
In general, a plant nursery remains very labour-intensive. Yet, some plant nursery processes have been automated and mechanised. Still it remains highly unlikely that all plants of a single plant nursery treated equally at the same time will arrive at the same condition together. Therefore, plant nursery plant care requires observation, judgement and manual dexterity, which Johnsons of Whixley values greatly.Labour intensity
Selection for sale requires comparison and judgement. A UK plant nursery‘s manpower that accounts for 70% of the production costs is not uncommon. The largest UK plant nurseries have moved to minimise labour costs by the use of computer controlled warehousing methods.More information about plant nursery >>