Back to our roots

Sustainability-minded mail-order companies are ditching the plastic and returning to the 'old ways', selling bare-rooted rather than potted plants. Ursula Buchan shares her delight

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I SPENT THE freezing winter of 1976 working as a lowly gardener at van Tubergen, a famous bulb firm in Haarlem, Holland. Although flowering bulbs were the company’s great thing, it also had a sideline, for the quiet months, selling packeted seed and hardy herbaceous perennials by mail order. These perennials were grown outside in the wonderfully fertile polder soil of North Holland. Our job, once the snow had melted, was to dig them up and bring them into unheated sheds to pack for sending by post to customers. I recall a large amount of newspaper being involved, it being the era before bubble wrap and plastic bags. (I also put newspaper in my wellington boots to insulate my feet from the bone-chilling concrete floors.) The seasons for this work were February to April and October and November, which are the best times to plant dormant or nearly dormant herbaceous plants if you want them to establish quickly and flourish.