4th February 2011

Welcome to our much reduced catalogue for 2011. Our production last year was greatly reduced due to the unexpected death of my father Peter in June. Many of you may have bought from him over the years.

From the 1950's he advertised widely his Aubretia, Saponaria occymoides which he named 'Tumbling Ted' and in winter his 'Baby Tree' collections. Trees were his real love and Bonsai his focus for some 50 years. He has populated the gardens of Great Britain with flowering plants and trees and his gentle philosophy of growing is in every plant that he sold.

So we open our eyes to another spring and embrace every new bud, shoot, germinating seed and joyous flower. As the soil warms and the days lengthen, so do our inner-selves push from the darkness of winter and I am thankful that my father and my grandfather Clement were nurserymen and I can continue to spend my life absorbed by plants.

Every winter we leave last year's flower stems as ornaments in the garden particularly when they are covered with the 'icing sugar' of frost, aster stems when snapped and dry make very good additions to kindling so they warm us with flower colour in autumn and warm us with flame in February. Soon we will cut them all down to make way for this year's growth and the bare earth will green rapidly reminding us of the visual harvest later.

Optimism is the main creed of us gardeners and the fulfilment of our planting dreams with over abundance of foliage, blooms and perfume is what makes everyone of us members of the same magnificent coterie.

May you have a happy, exciting and floriferous 2011.

Mark and Elaine Trenear

Please note due to the above events we have very few pinks this year.