IT’S blooming marvellous in Bradley – and soon will be across Kirklees!
Staff working for Kirklees Council are working hard to ensure more than a quarter of a million blooms are ready to brighten up the town’s streets and pavements.
There is still a little time left for businesses to join the growing number who enjoy a blooming beautiful summer thanks to Kirklees Council’s nursery.
Preparations are well in hand at the nursery on Leeds Road for the production of hundreds of hanging baskets, barrels and containers.
Last summer the nursery supplied a record 1,500 hanging baskets – half were self-watering – along with nearly 160 barrels and tiered planters along with scores of barrier planters on the ring roads in Huddersfield and Dewsbury.
To meet an anticipated similar demand this year – as well as providing all the bedding plants for the Council’s parks and open spaces – the nursery is currently cultivating a quarter of a million plants from seed and potting on some 43,000 bought-in young plants.
Among the plants being grown from seed are 132,000 geraniums and thousands of lobelia, marigolds, salvias, ageratum and verbenas.
Being grown from seed for the first time are more than 2,500 Festuca Glaucantha, an ornamental blue grass, and 1,300 Cosmos Sonata which have delicate pink flowers.
The young plants being grown include over 3,000 begonias, nearly 80 miniature banana plants and over 2,000 Lophos, a trailing plant with bell-shaped flowers.
There are also impatiens, petunias, and fuchsias beginning to fill the large glasshouse and rows of polytunnels.
Nursery manager Paul Marshall said: “Over the last few years we have nearly doubled the number of different varieties of plants we grow.”
Orders for baskets and containers are being submitted by Town Centre Managements and Area Committees.
Any individual business that would like to make an order should contact the Parks and Open Spaces-managed nursery as soon as possible on 01484 223899.
