New Years Eve 2007

Well, it's come form nowhere but here we are New Years Eve 2007. Fully driven by my Christmas presents of Entrepreneur type books i'm part way through plotting my New Years resolutions. Essentially from now on I want to be successful.

I've always loved Art and Design, infact that's what I studied and qualified as (3d Designer/Maker and later I trained as a lecturer in Art and Multimedia Design). I think the way I see the world in from my Artist's perspective has a massive influence on me, what I like and what I do.

I somehow got into plants, I was pretty young at the time, it started with the revolutionary gardening equiptment of an empty Ferrero Rocher tub and a packet of Marigold seeds and went from there. I tried allsorts, Bonsai, Climbers bits of everything. Lots of stuff failed, but what I did learn was experience.

So here I am today, a few years ago I set up "Winter Hill Plants" as an outlet for some of my spare bits. I figured, if I can get what I want out of something (i.e plants for myself) and then sell enough left over plants so that effectively it hasn't cost me anything then I was onto a winner. So I started ordering what I liked then selling any spares I might have. My site was poo, I created it myself by learning HTML but it did the job and cost me nothing. It served it's purpose of advertising my plants and I sold enough to keep my hobby going.

I have to say, the day my mum decided to tell a fellow school friends mum (infact they weren't good friend at all but hey) that I got a greenhouse for Christmas wasn't a good one. I knew what was coming, ridicule. When it came back to me I simply denied it but being into plants was a geeky thing and I knew it and it wasn't something I advertised to anyone. It's different now, I still don't advertise to friend what i'm into although I think as you get older it's more acceptable to have a geeky interest. I put my initial interest in plants down to the artist bit in me, I see things in an architectural mindset, the shapes, contours, textures and colours. They inspire my artistic work. To get this exotic inspiration it therefore made sense to grow them myself, the lure of making a few quid at the same time was also appealing. I think my entreprenurial skills started young, I remember collecting grass seed stems and selling them to my gran when she visited for 20p a bunch, I bet she was thrilled with paying for weed seeds!


Somehow I got into an Exotic Plants forum down the line and my passion took off from there. I could take a tiny seed and grow it into a rare/ exotic/ unusual/ valuable plant, the challenge was to get the thing to germinate in the first place then get it to survive, the lure of Exotics in this country is to create a garden full of tropical looking plants like you might see on holiday but have them growing in your own garden, your own bit of paradise. It's no wonder the interest in Exotics took off, the challenge of also trying to get the things to survive our icy winters was great.

Now a few years down I got married, had a baby and a terrace house with no garden, I had to sell all my plants as I was no longer living at home to care for them all and I needed the money to fund my art materials. I gave up work in the school hols in 2006 , I was pregnant within a couple of months and got busy trying to learn new art skills and sell stuff. In October 2007 we moved to a beautiful 4 bed house with a garden front and back and I thought sod it, not only will I try and make a business selling art but I will set up a nursery but with a more focused business head on not just a hobby.

I bought a second hand greenhouse that me, hubby and dad had to go and dismantle 2.5 hours away, step-dad in law built the base and did a superb job at it ant then we got the frame up. I ordered plants and seeds in and awaited February 2008 which was when I was to sow my seeds. In the meantime I sowed some seeds that I could and had the heater set to maintain 10 degrees.

And now on New Years Eve 2007 I am doing my first task of starting a blog of the nursery goings on...