FOR creating a Gold Medal-winning Chelsea show garden, the designer receives all the credit, but they would be at a distinct disadvantage without good suppliers. It is plants of the highest quality, as well as eye-catching new introductions, that separate the Best in Show from the also-rans.
Mark Straver of Hortus Loci in Hampshire is the plant wizard responsible for turning many a designer’s plant list into reality and, for next week’s delayed show, he has been sourcing plants for Tom Massey, Robert Myers, Arit Anderson and Marie-Louise Agius. If you snapped him in half, the word plantsman would run right through his core. His Dutch grandfather was a nurseryman and his father sold shrubs, wholesale, in the Woking area of Surrey. Add in a French grandmother and a Scottish grandfather, for extra hybrid vigour, and you’ll get an insight into his energy levels.
Mr Straver started his own successful nursery business at the age of 19. By the time he reached 30, he was working seven days a week and realised that he hadn’t been anywhere. ‘I sold my share to my business partner and went travelling for a year.’ He became a personal trainer, but soon realised that he couldn’t walk past a flower shop, nursery or garden centre without going in. ‘I couldn’t get over plants, however hard I tried,’ he admits. ‘I applied to Crocus at the beginning of its internet plant business— although I knew nothing about computers or the internet. Founders Peter Clay and Mark Fane, who were businessmen with a love of plants, let me have a free hand and I spent 12 happy years there.’
Denne historien er fra September 15, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 15, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
