We moved our garden maintenance operations to our new location in January 2001, from our old base in Chaucer Road near the city centre of Cambridge. It was sad to leave Chaucer Road, where we had developed an expanding interior plant maintenance service, grew a wide range of plants for use in the university and sold the surplus plants to the public at our plant sale open days. Also from Chaucer Road we maintained many university properties gardens with two mobile gardening teams. 

 

 

We have moved to this site for a number of reasons and expect to continue to do all the work we have done in the passed with room to expand and meet the future needs the university request of the gardening services. The new site is located off the A603 about 3 minutes drive from junction 12 of the M11 and 10 minutes drive from Cambridge city centre. 

The site was previously use as an animal breeding unit which we now share with other sections of the universities maintenance unit. Our building has been converted from an old pig unit with a green field site surrounding it. The following pictures show the sites developments and I shall continue to add pictures as the site develops. To view larger pictures click on the thumbnail view, click back on your browser to return to this page. 

The picture on the left is the road leading to our site off Barton Road (A603), its a narrow road with passing places at the top, in the middle and at the bottom of the road. Parking spaces are available around our site on our plant sale open days.

The pictures bellow show the old pig unit before any work has been started.

                    

The building has been gutted inside and refurbished with office, mess room, storage, garage space and a potting shed. Outside the building, a fence has been erected to contain the nursery growing area, inside the fence a new glasshouse and polythene tunnels have been erected and the area leveled. The bad weather over the winter period of 2000 has held up and created problems undertaking the work. The following pictures show the progress.

                                          

The three pictures above show the inside of the building, the first picture was taken prior to removal of the old fittings, the other pictures show the inside gutted before being refurbished. The picture to the right shows the wooden fence removed, the grass has been cut and the turf removed ready for the glasshouse footings excavations. The pictures below show the work undertaken prior to the erection of the glasshouse and tunnels.

                     

The pictures to the left and right show the the progress of the glasshouse walls. While below shows the erection of the tunnels and glasshouse. 

 

                         

                                          

The last picture above was taken in October 2000 when the fence was erected, the weather started to take a turn for the worst and progress of the nursery was halted. Below shows the start of the service supplies into the glasshouse.

                                          

                                                                               

             

 The pictures above show the final stages in the completion of the glasshouse and tunnels, the pictures below shows the path that has been laid and the leveling of the surrounding area.

             

 The long and cold wet weather during the autumn and winter period, has hindered the move of our plants from the Chaucer Road site. How ever in late February 2001 we took full advantage of a short mild spell to move our plants. To the right and below are some pictures showing plants that we moved.

 

                         

 The following are general pictures showing the development of our site during the period from June of 2001 to May 2002

                             

 

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 list of Hardy Plants we are growing or

   list of Summer Bedding and patio plants available