In the latest of my occasional nursery visits, I’ve been behind the normally closed doors of Green’s Leaves in Gloucestershire, which specialises in the rare and choice.
It’s a gardening truism that no matter how big your greenhouse, you will always fill it and the glasshouse at Green’s Leaves is no different. It may cover an enviable quarter-of-an-acre but every inch of staging is filled, plants are clustered in groups on the floor and at one point we have to squeeze past a 4ft agave that is blocking the way.
It has to be, I decided, because anyone who sets up an independent nursery must be smitten by plants and certainly Paul Green is slightly obsessed. Our progress down the paths between staging is slow as he points out first one plant of interest and then another.
A beautifully shaped and plump succulent catches my eye (pictured top) and he explains that it’s Faucaria tuberculosa, commonly called ‘Tiger Jaws’ or sometimes ‘Warty Tiger Jaws’, that it comes from South Africa, flowers in late summer but that he likes it as much for its foliage as for the blooms.
Each of the plants is sporting several bulging seed pods and Paul comments that he may well try raising some new stock from seed.
Every plant we encounter comes with a fulsome description, including how to grow it, what sort of soil it prefers and why he likes that particular variety. It’s the sort of information you get only from someone who really knows and understands their stock.
Paul has grown things from childhood – soft fruit, rhubarb and bedding plants – in his family’s back garden.
“I used to grow coleus from seed and sell them to the local greengrocer,” he recalls.
He went on to train at Pershore and set up Green’s Leaves on a site near Newent about 10 years ago.
It’s not open to the public with the plants sold instead via the regular Rare Plant Fairs and Plant Hunters’ Fairs, one-off events such as the plant fair at Spetchley Park and at the talks Paul gives to garden groups across the country.
He specialises in what he describes as “the unusual, particularly foliage and sensory” with plants chosen for their rarity, scent and form, or just because they are “good doers”.
So, nestled among the rarely seen are more familiar things, such as Pulmonaria ‘Diana Clare’, originally bred by Bob Brown and still widely regarded as one of the best forms, while outside there is Bergenia ‘Diamond Drops’ and ‘Overture’, two that Paul believes are particularly good varieties of this oft-overlooked plant.
The range at Green’s Leaves is wide, encompassing shrubs, grasses, perennials and succulents. There are even some trees, among them the unusual weeping form of the toffee apple tree, Cercidiphyllum japonicum pendulum.
One of his best sellers is Sophora ‘Little Baby’, a small New Zealand shrub that has yellow parrot beak flowers and dainty leaves but which is primarily grown for its zig-zag structure. Paul’s been testing its hardiness by growing one outside: “It’s for an experiment to see how much you can get away with”. So far, it’s come through unscathed.
Other plants we encountered included the rare variegated Agave ‘Cornelius’, which has a broader gold band and leaves with a more distinctive wavy edge than A. americana ‘Variegata’.
Then where was Fascicularia bicolor, which turns red and will have blue flowers, the delicate fibre optic grass, Isolepis cernua, and Uncinia rubra, a blood red sedge that Paul believes is better than the commonly grown Japanese blood grass.
A dwarf Zebra grass, Miscanthus sinensis ‘Gold Bar’, is he believes a particularly good form as the characteristic ‘stripes’ appear with the new growth.
“You don’t have to wait for it to colour up.”
I was rather taken with Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Little Tabby’, a green and cream version of the more often seen black ophiopogon. There was something rather appealing about the dishevelled appearance of its grass-like foliage.
Some plants are brought in as tiny plugs but a lot of the stock is grown from seed, division or cuttings – there were a tray of short lonicera hard wood cuttings beginning to sprout on one piece of staging.
Incredibly, he waters the glasshouse by hand. He used to have an automatic system but it broke and he finds that in many ways the hands-on method is better as it gives him a chance to inspect the plants.
“There’s such a range of plants you can water more accurately by hand because you’re looking at stuff.”
Some things are grown in their hundreds, such as polemonium, others that are very rare may number only three or four as Paul has only one stock plant.
And it’s those unusual things that he loves most: “It’s satisfying doing something a bit different, a bit special.”
• To find out more about Green’s Leaves and the events Paul will be attending, visit the website.