Where to buy greener veg plants

When I first pledged to myself not to allow any new plastic into my garden, it took a while to dawn on me that I might have to stop buying plants.

Hairy Pot Plants - made of coir and grown peat-free - are sold in garden centres (they do a good range of herbs, as well as perennials)

I love a good flower show or plant fair as much as the next gardener: all those gorgeous perfect flowers, inspirational plant combinations and ravishing displays of fruit and veg. But you try buying a plant from one without also taking home a plastic pot.  

I deliberately went on a hunt for a plant sales stall which *didn’t* sell plants in plastic pots at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show last year and found just one – a cacti and succulent grower which offered its beautifully grown samples in pretty clay pots. That was it: one solitary stand among the sea of plastic. And that’s at the RHS where they’re supposed to be driving higher levels of sustainability.

The only clay pots in the (plant) village

There are many ways of getting your hands on plants without the plastic, or the peat, or the pesticides that usually accompany commercially produced stock. You can take cuttings from the gardens of friends and family; you can sow a wide variety of perennials from seed; or you can divide up more established clumps to make more plants for free.

I do this a lot – certainly a lot more than I used to – and it’s great fun, and very rewarding. But sometimes buying is the only way: I have a bit of a mint collecting habit, for example, which requires a lot of hunting down off-beam varieties in obscure corners of herb nurseries. And as regular readers will know, I’m currently failing to germinate chillies so may need to fall back on emergency ready-grown plants later this year. This is a strategy I also use to replace other veg I’ve run out of time to sow, or whose seedlings have fallen foul of the slugs, rabbits or mice.

All is not lost. One of the good things about living through a quiet green revolution in gardening is that there are now many horticultural businesses which are on the same page as us, environmentally speaking: they go to great lengths to provide plants peat-free, often organic and delivered wrapped in newspaper or cardboard so you don’t have to worry about a pot, either.

These are the only ones I will buy from now: they’re a wonderful resource and I am so glad they do all they do, because it can’t be easy to swim against the commercial tide. Hopefully one day that tide will turn in their direction properly, and I won’t need to write out lists like this as all growers will be producing and delivering their plants in sympathy with the environment. Here’s hoping.

Herbs

Caves Folly Nurseries Malvern, Worcs Peat-free and organic for over 40 years. Good range of herbs as well as ornamental perennials.

Kitchen Garden Plant Centre Newent, Gloucestershire Herbs of every kind, including ‘collections’ of eight or more different varieties supplied in 9cm pots.

Norfolk Herbs Dereham, Norfolk Peat-free since 2019, with some really mouthwatering herb varieties on offer (Basil ‘Wild Magic’, anyone?).

Pepperpot Herbs Alton, Hampshire Wonderful selection of all kinds of herbs, most of them propagated on-site in peat-free compost.

Fruit

(A short list - or rather a long one, as if I wrote it all out it would include all fruit tree nurseries as they routinely sell fruit trees and bushes bare-root in winter – by far the best way to buy).

Agroforestry Research Trust Totnes, Devon Amazing nursery offering unusual fruit trees and perennial veg, closely linked to Martin Crawford’s renowned forest garden.

Vegetable plug plants

Delfland Nurseries March, Cambridgeshire Superb quality plug plants grown peat-free and organic, packed in biodegradable materials.

Pennard Plants East Pennard, Somerset A bit of a one-stop shop for fruit, perennial veg, herbs, seeds and young vegetable plants – all grown in a lovely Victorian walled garden.

Rocket Gardens Helston, Cornwall Superb quality vegetable plug plants, delivered in cardboard sleeves.

Suttons Paignton, Devon Now completely peat-free for plants they raise in their own nursery – which includes a great selection of vegetable plug plants.

Lovely peat-free plug plants from Rocket Gardens

Other edibles

Edulis Pangbourne, Berkshire edulis.co.uk Weird and wonderful edibles, mostly perennial veg but also fruit and herbs. Organic, peat-free, reuses pots.

Incredible Edibles Ashburton, Kent Does what it says on the tin, really – perennial vegetable specialist with some really remarkable edible plants to choose from.

The Backyard Larder East Yorkshire Alison Tindale’s box of delights is another great place to turn if you’re hunting down obscure (and sometimes not so obscure) perennial vegetables.