Greenwood Plants is a wholesale nursery that specialises in growing and supplying plants, shrubs, and trees for commercial landscaping. Since early 2022, Greenwood has been running extensive trials to explore different types of growing media to use in their annual six million plant production.
The trials enabled the production team to adjust the composition to ensure that the structure, pH and nutrient levels of the compost were consistent, and the irrigation programmes modified to suit the new compost composition. They have recently won the ‘Peat Free Grower of the Year’ award at the 2023 HTA awards.
Speaking at the RHS Peat Summit on Monday, Greenwood Director Melanie Asker said: “We are delighted to have met this demanding target which is testament to the hard work and dedication of the Greenwood Team. We are huge advocates of sustainable growing, and passionately believe this is the responsible stance we need to take as one of the UK’s largest growers and importers of plants and trees. Our focus is now on working with our supply chain to ensure that any purchased stock is peat-free. We have several European and UK suppliers now growing plants for the new season in peat-free compost”.
Greenwood is one of the leading peat-free growers in the UK. Their achievement not only means that a further six millions plants on the market will be peat-free, but sets an example to the (global) industry as to the feasibility of (large scale) transitioning to peat-free production, safeguarding the environment and peatland habitats.