Environmental and Land-based Studies

Robert Paxton, Horticultural Craft Gardener

Robert Paxton, Horticultural Craft Gardener: The average day, depending on what season we're in, could be anything from sowing the geraniums that we have in this greenhouse here, we have 216 cells in each tray of which we will do maybe four or five hundred trays a day.

Obviously when they have developed, we'll start potting into different trays depending on what size trays the actual plants need. We're always keeping an eye out for hygiene and pest diseases because we try not to use chemical whenever possible.

As they develop through the seasons, it'll be down to distribution where we'll be sending them out in wagons to distribute around Leeds and its surrounding areas. There's also the side of hanging baskets, which you'll see on the lampposts, which we'll be making 25, 30 a day of. Depending on size, they vary between 14-inch baskets to 18-inch baskets.

As the weather increases in heat we've got the watering side of things, may spend all day watering the plants. There is an irrigation system above the plants but that's not always as accurate as hand water mainly because some plants don't need to be watered whereas other ones do. One of the major causes of the plants dying is over watering. People usually tend to over water the plants, whereas we try to keep them as dry as possible. It doesn't increase as many pests or diseases that way.

Keeping the plants healthy is really just checking the plants on a daily basis. We have traps that basically catch any flies, not so there's no flies in the greenhouse but so we can identify what pests and diseases there are in the greenhouse. Then we can act accordingly to that.

Usually, depending on what time of year it is, we'll predominantly be in the greenhouses producing the bedding plants. There are quiet times a year we'll be maybe out putting out a floral display of which there's the Chelsea Flower Show where certain staff, if they volunteer, will be able to go down to London and put on one of the most prestigious garden shows in the world. There are certain in-bloom groups, small villages around the city that like to improve their area so we'll also grow plants especially for them as well.

We're constantly trying to improve the nursery with things like the sowing machine, the last sowing machine we had was maybe 20 years old. In the last couple of years, we've tried to improve the sowing. Mainly for waste management and for the environment the watering is now more accurate we're not wasting as much water and watering in the seedlings.

Narrator: The council is required to carry out an energy audit. It enables more effective management of energy use as well as controlling the nursery's environment more efficiently.

Robert Paxton, Horticultural Craft Gardener: The whole nursery is monitored by a computer that we have in the office that measures the temperature, humidity, wind, weather. You can control the nursery from that computer, if we wanted to water an acre of plants by maybe two clicks of a button that would happen. We can also control maybe the ventilation in the greenhouses, if we need more wind and fresh air in just so the plants aren't constantly sweating.

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