Since the nursery moved to Burncoose over 25 years ago, our medal tally for our stands at Chelsea has been an impressive 19 gold medals, 8 silver gilt medals, 3 silver medals, and a bronze medal.

The publicity associated with Chelsea has perhaps made Burncoose better known in the rest of the UK than in Cornwall. There is no doubt that the Chelsea Flower Show is the most prestigious horticultural event of the year and the spin off mail order and landscaping business which results could not be obtained elsewhere at other shows.

Nevertheless, mounting a 100m² exhibit in central London is prohibitively expensive. It costs in excess of £30,000 to stage the show and over 20 staff members are involved in what is a very hard fortnights work indeed. These costs have risen dramatically in recent years to the point where many larger nurseries and garden centres than Burncoose have given up exhibiting at Chelsea altogether.

Burncoose has been incredibly fortunate in attracting a succession of City of London sponsors over the last 14 years who have helped overcome the mounting cost burden. This is especially important because Chelsea visitors today are a very different breed to those of the past. RHS “members only” days and regular overcrowding are now no more. Today Chelsea entry tickets may well cost over £40 each, many are now sold overseas, and Health & Safety diktats on visitor numbers are absolute. Chelsea used to be a place for placing orders to buy plants and, 15 years ago, Burncoose regularly took over 1,000 orders at the show. Today we would be lucky to put 100 into the order book.

So, as Chelsea has changed into a place where visitors expect a great spectacle but do not want or even realise that they can buy by mail order, so Burncoose has changed as well.

We no longer attend 15-20 flower shows throughout the UK. Instead we have diverted these resources to developing and expanding our pictorial website and catalogue and to multimedia marketing to existing and potential new customers.

Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd have been our sponsors for the last 6 years and we are especially grateful to Guy Hands, the Chairman, and many of his staff for helping to continue to make Chelsea possible for Burncoose. Without Terra Firma using Chelsea and the Burncoose stand to help entertain their clients, Burncoose Nurseries would very probably join the ever growing list of ‘household names’ who have abandoned Chelsea as an unaffordable cost.

Thank you Terra Firma!