Burncoose Nurseries was originally a traditional mail order business attending Chelsea and up to 25 RHS and other flower shows throughout the UK. The show season was our advertising window to show new and unusual plants to our customers which were generally not available in the expanding garden centre concept where sales of sundries and restaurants were often (even then) more important than plants.
Like so many traditional small industries, time, competition and geography were not on our side. The majority of our serious mail order customers were located hundreds of miles away and the seasonal round of shows were becoming increasingly uneconomical. The arrival of next day delivery services and, more particularly, the internet has however led to a total transformation of our mail order business in the last 12-15 years.
We still have our traditional strengths in offering top quality and immediately plantable plants covering a huge range of nearly 4,000 ornamental trees, shrubs, herbaceous and conservatory plants. No other UK nursery offers such a diverse and interesting range by mail order. We continue to introduce new, rare and unknown plants to UK gardeners which was historically one of the key reasons for customers to seize on our new catalogues. In 2014 we have no less than 250 new entries. In so far as we specialise in anything other than mail order we do continue to offer the most extensive catalogue of magnolias, camellias, rhododendrons and other rarer woodland garden plants available from any UK nursery. Our regular long-term customers continue to use our plant range as a reference guide or a ‘one stop shop’ for many different types and sizes of garden.
The transformation of our business to adapt to the challenges and opportunities of internet shopping has not been easy. In Cornwall we have been fortunate to have had access to European funding for new investment in our packing sheds, computer equipment and in major ongoing website development.
It has taken over 8 years to produce 4 separate top quality website photographs of nearly every plant we grow in leaf, flower, maturity and as you would receive it today. Our photographic archive containing literally tens of thousands of pictures in response to what our customers want to know about plants for their garden is perhaps our greatest recent achievement and the strongest driver of growth in our business.
Today around 75% of our business is online and it is more true than ever that Burncoose Nurseries are better known outside Cornwall than in our own home county. The internet has enabled us to reach out to new and first time gardeners, whom we have never met, those who want to celebrate a birthday or anniversary or simply to those who want to give a present to a friend.
Many of the visitors to our website now use us as a source of expert advice on how to care for and grow our plants successfully in different parts of the country. All the new RHS Awards of Garden Merit and the new RHS UK hardiness ratings for those plants are now included. Topical tips, common names and plants for different situations are only a few of the 97 different search categories available on our website. It is all there and more without the need for a phone call although we are still open 7 days a week in office hours to discuss plants with you and to answer your plant queries. Our website adds to the service we can offer but old-fashioned ‘service’ is still only a call away.
As the volume of internet mail order orders has grown we have, this year, adapted our standard carriage and packing charges to reduce the delivery cost on all our many website special offers as well as extending the order values in each price banding. However please do not forget that we sell mature grown plants in a minimum of a 1.5 litre pot for all herbaceous plants and all our shrubs are in 2 or 3 litre pots. We do NOT sell plugs, plug liners or 7cm pot liners. What we sell you will usually be capable of flowering properly in its first season after planting without any special care and protection, potting on or undue effort by you. You get what you pay for!
After the wettest autumn and winter for 100 years followed by the return of winter on 10th March, with biting east winds and the total destruction of the magnolia flowers for the first time in 20 years, spring finally arrived in late April. A disastrous late spring for gardeners and nurserymen alike thankfully then gave way to an early summer rush to catch up. For the first time in a decade the nursery was busier in May and June than in March and April. Then, as usual, the weather evened itself out and we had a wonderful growing and flowering summer. Such is gardening!
As we celebrate our 30 last years and thank all of our customers for their support it is interesting to reflect on how much has changed EXCEPT for the plants themselves. We now look forward to the challenges that the next 30 years will bring.
