KILDARE GARDENING COLUMN: Buds ready to burst out with new growth

The New Year has definitely started the same way 2022 finished, busier than ever with lots of orders going out every day.

Our delivery drivers have been all over the country delivering trees and plants and doing so with a smile, as the face of the company, it really does make such a difference.

Last year at this stage works commenced on one of our plant display areas behind our beloved train. This area now stands proudly completed and works as a standing area for lots of our shaped trees, climbers, fruit trees including the pleached ones and the candelabra shaped fruit trees.

It also includes lots of larger and more mature shrubs that we hold when they come from our production areas and are ready for sale. We also converted an area of the nursery into our stunning new offices and meeting rooms as we had well and truly outgrown our old office space, which is now occupied by our production manager, Marie and our design team, who now have the space and peace to complete their drawings.

It’s difficult to think that this was only a year ago. So much has changed in that time, but now our office team have the space they need. Angela leads the team and does it with such efficiency. Ava joined the team last year as a junior but she has become a fundamental part of the group, organising our design team and co-ordinating the consultations and quotations and ensuring everything on that side runs to clockwork.

Helen runs our despatch team ensuring that all the orders are picked correctly, and that the deliveries go out as quickly as possible throughout the country, and that the delivery drivers have all the information that they need to deliver the trees and plants.

She also organises all our planting teams and ensures that they have everything they need for the landscaping and planting jobs and that the schedule runs as it should.

Holly is currently helping me with updating our stock on the website, ensuring that everything you see on the online store is as it should be, available and looking at its best (for the time of year), especially as we now have our UK website and the stocks of pots and Finn & Elder Furniture are all exactly as it should be.

All members of the team also answer all the calls, emails and messages that come in, responding as promptly as possible and giving as much information as they can — an absolute dream team. They are all now located in the new office and have a little more space.

Exciting plans

Our design team are busy designing gardens throughout the country and they are booked up this month, but have some slots left for February to design gardens that progress then to our build team, headed up by David.

Our design options start at €295 so we are always busy and are able to advise and guide lots of homeowners on their gardens.

This year we have an exciting plan for upgrade, but its not quite ready to share with you yet as we have some meetings over the next week to pull everything together but its so very exciting.

What else is happening around here? Well we are doing a few upgrades and a facelift to our Nursery Park. We are expanding it into the next field as we have so many shaped and specimen trees that you love as much as we do. It’s great that we can show you the trees in a much more natural environment with their shape and scale. This is really beneficial but its also just as important for us to be able to video and photograph them for the website and the App so that you can look at what we have on this part of the nursery from your desk or your kitchen table — ensuring that even when you can’t make it to us that you still get the Caragh Nurseries experience — how cool is that!

An early spring

Its been a warm week and if it keeps in this same vein, then we are going to have an early Spring. My Magnolia buds are getting big and the Acacia trees are starting to show signs of their beautiful yellow flowers. Our Camellias, Rhododendrons and Azaleas are looking like they are going to have such a blast of colour of the buds are anything to go by.

Our production is in full flow, potting the last of the trees that have come from our fields for this year’s crops, although our rootballed trees and hedging season is still in full flow.

We always keep back enough stock to sell rootballed. Work has started on our new show/display garden and when its starts looking a little better over the coming weeks we’ll start to show you more of that.

In my main garden I have been adding some last bulbs into pots and cleaning up the leaves’ specially from my Olive trees that lost quite a few after that cold spell in December. One of my beauties in particular is looking a little bare but I’m not worried, it should gain all those leaves back in the Spring.

So for now I better go and crack on with some more work. It seems like its going to be a very busy week and next week I am going to give you some ideas of the sizes and measurements of our trees and plants, how we measure them and size grade them, from potted shrubs up to the most mature of rootballed trees. Until then keep gardening, it’s not only good for the soul, its good for the heart too.

Jo