Behind the scenes6 min read
Inside the shade house: how a plant gets ready to be sold
A plant is on our benches for between six months and nine years before it is listed. Here is what happens in between.
By Muhammad Sami
The gap between a rooted cutting and a plant worth selling is longer than most people assume, and it is almost entirely unglamorous.
This is the actual sequence for a plant leaving our nursery, using an adenium as the example because it is the slowest thing we grow from seed.
Year one: seed to seedling
Adenium seed is sown in a gritty mix in March and germinates in under a week — it is one of the fastest things to sprout. Then it does almost nothing visible for a year while it builds a root system.
They stay on the roof, unshaded, from the beginning. A seedling raised under shade cloth grows faster and produces a thin, weak caudex, which is exactly what we are trying to avoid.
Years two and three: the caudex
This is where the value accumulates. The swollen base thickens only in strong sun and only slowly, and there is no way to accelerate it that does not show. A three-year seed-grown plant has a fat, low, well-proportioned base; a one-year plant pushed with feed has a tall thin one.
They are potted on once a year, always into terracotta, always into a mix that is more grit than compost.
Hardening off
Every plant we sell spends its final season outdoors under 30 to 50 percent shade cloth, whatever it is. Foliage plants included.
This is the step that most nurseries skip and it is the reason plants collapse a fortnight after they get home. A plant grown soft under glass has thin leaves and a weak cuticle; the same plant grown outdoors has thicker leaves, shorter internodes and a real tolerance for the conditions in an actual house.
The last two weeks
Before anything is listed it is checked over for pests, the pot is cleaned, and any damaged leaf is removed. It is watered thoroughly and left to drain overnight before packing.
Then it is photographed, on the bench, in daylight. The photographs on this site are that — not stock images, not a supplier catalogue.
