Wildflower Nursery Gloucestershire | Herefordshire
Ecohab Wildflowers is run by Liz Brookes from her dedicated wildflower nursery in Gloucestershire. Liz has worked for over fifteen years as a professional botanist and wildflower specialist. Her motivation to develop this nursery stems from the desire to fill a gap in the industry for local provenance wildflowers for habitat restoration projects. This specialist nursery supports existing growers in the wildflower sector and provides more diversity for restoration projects.
Liz is a specialist wholesale grower of conservation-worthy and rare plants. These plants are key to restoring functioning ecosystems and have often coevolved with our native pollinators. The provenance of our plants and seed is provided to county and National Character Areas (NCAs) to ensure adaptation to local environments.
Wholesale Wildflower Nursery Gloucestershire/Herefordshire
Wholesale Wildflower Nursery Gloucestershire/Herefordshire
Ecohab Wildflowers is run by Liz Brookes from her dedicated wildflower nursery in West Gloucestershire. Liz has worked for over fifteen years as a professional botanist and wildflower specialist. Her motivation to develop this nursery stems from the desire to fill a gap in the industry for local provenance wildflowers for habitat restoration projects. This specialist nursery supports existing growers in the wildflower sector and provides more diversity for restoration projects.
Liz is a specialist wholesale grower of conservation-worthy and rare plants. These plants are key to restoring functioning ecosystems and have often coevolved with our native pollinators. The provenance of our plants and seed is provided to county and National Character Areas (NCAs) to ensure adaptation to local environments.
Plug production is completed in-house; growing material is sustainably hand-collected from local habitats. This is undertaken in compliance with the Millennium Seed Bank and RBG Kew seed harvesting protocol.
We exclusively use peat-free compost sourced from a company that actively undertakes peat bog restoration in the British uplands. No artificial fertilisers, pesticides or herbicides are used in the production of wildflower plugs or seed. The polytunnel uses integrated pest management techniques to monitor and control pests and diseases. Long life trays are used in propagation and final plug sizes to cut down on single use plastic.
Our small batches of seed are cleaned using a zig-zag aspirator, which allows for removal of impurities and also removes smaller unviable wildflower seeds. Orthodox seeds are dried to ambient conditions for short-term storage (<6 months) and kept in cool dry storage with a desiccant to absorb excess moisture. Seeds that require medium-term storage (0.5-3yrs) are dried to ~30% relative humidity (RH) and stored in the fridge to maintain higher viability. Seed viability is ensured through removal of lighter seed in the cleaning process, cut tests (look for fully formed embryo) or germinating a proportion of the seed.
