Tortworth Plants - About Us

Tortworth Plants was started in 2013 and is run by Tim Hancock and Rebecca Flint. We both have a passion for horticulture, and like nothing more than hunting out new plants to add to our product range.

Tim studied at Pershore College and achieved an HND in Commercial Horticulture. Prior to establishing Tortworth Plants, he was Production Director at a large wholesale nursery in Wiltshire, where he was responsible for production of quality plants for sale, as well as communicating with customers in a sales role. Tim has also worked for a local retail nursery, helping at horticultural events around the country and gaining valuable retail sales experience.

Rebecca went to Merrist Wood College and gained an NCH in Plant Propagation. She also has many years' experience in the industry, including retail shows, mail order processing and wholesale production. Coming from a horticultural family, she has been involved with plants since childhood and attended her first flower show aged just 3 months!

Setting Up the Nursery

The nursery is situated on the 4000 acre Tortworth Estate. We moved onto a very wet, two acre field in November 2012, adjoining an old dairy and milking parlour, unused for many years and in need of a lot of tidying up.

We started work on the field, while Tortworth Estate set about renovating the buildings. A new roof was put on, all the milking parlour fittings removed, a new water and electric supply installed and one room insulated, boarded out and painted up to serve as an office. The first job on the field was to put in drainage to take away some of the water and lay a roadway to allow access.

The weather was not on our side, with weeks of heavy rain slowing everything down. We also found a hidden spring halfway up the field, which will now be channelled down to a storage tank and used for irrigation. Eventually we managed to get 185 tonnes of gravel laid down to form nursery beds, the roof went back on the buildings and the sun finally came out when we started to put up our first tunnel.

  Just before Christmas 2012, with the tunnel finished, we put up some cold frames and the first plants started to go in. Our spring bulb crop and a range of early alpines were potted up ready to overwinter.  

In the New Year, we were able to move into our office, and then pushed on with preparing the nursery, building a water storage tank and shed for our irrigation system, putting up fencing to keep the local deer away from our plants, constructing temporary hoops to cover newly potted plants, and erecting a greenhouse for use as a propagation facility.

  By April 20th 2013, the greenhouse was full and we had set up our propagation beds to start producing more and more of our own plants from seed and cuttings. The weather had, at last, improved and we were able to remove the covers from some of the plants. It was really good to finally see things growing!  
  At the end of June 2013, we could really see what had been achieved on the nursery. The irrigation system was fully up and running, which freed up more of our valuable time, allowing us to keep working on producing top-quality plants. We have also started attending plant sales and other events, which gives us a chance to meet our customers face to face, and we have even held an Open Day on the nursery, as part of Open Farm Sunday on the Tortworth Estate.  

We are always adding new plants to our range, and new lines will become available all the time. As soon as they are ready, new plants will be added to our online catalogue, so please check back again soon, or contact us if there is a particular plant that you are looking for.