Aquatic nursery set for RHS Chelsea debut
Lincolnshire Pond Plants will make their debut exhibit at the 2023 RHS Chelsea Flower Show when they join the world’s plant growing elite.
The leading UK aquatic plant nursery is based at their 15 acre nursery in Old RAF Binbrook near Market Rasen where their team of 20 staff provide online plant sales in the UK, Europe and around the World.
They will be the only aquatic and pond plant supplier invited to exhibit at this year’s show in the Great Pavilion.
The nursery is very much a family owned business and Dawn Fisher, her son David Reynolds and his wife Kayleigh, are busy preparing and growing an array of high-quality plants to be included in their exhibit ‘Gone Fishing‘.
The exhibit will feature a large, hand-built raised wooden pond, surrounded by a deck offering the perfect place on which to sit and enjoy a spot of fishing. The pond will display a selection of marginal and aquatic plants in a range of subtle shades of predominantly greens and white.
Plants being featured in and around the pond’s margins will include the sweet scented Aponogeton distachyos (water hawthorn), white water lilies, cardamine pratensis (cuckoo flower) and the dramatic tall blooms of Butomus umbellatus (water rush), and Anemopsis californium (Apache beads). Shorter more prolific flowerers will include water plantains, such as Baldelia ranunculoides alongside the taller Alisma plantago.
A collection of irises will be used on the pond margins including two Iris which the nursery has never exhibited at a Show before. The first is the deep purple ‘Louisanna black gamecock’ and the second is the dramatic deep red flowering ‘Ann Chowning’. These jewel coloured plants will have to be added to the display by Dawn in the last minutes before the Show opens, to ensure the flowers keep their strong colours while in the shade of the Great Pavilion.
Dawn and Kayleigh (pictured above with David) will be illustrating the wide varieties of plants that can be used in pond schemes, using grasses such as cotton grass around the deck edges and vital water oxygenating plants in the pond, such as Hippuris vulgaris (water mare’s tail), the tiny leafled Hydrocotyle sibthorpiodes variegate (crystal confetti) and water shamrock.
The design also features an island bog garden area featuring ferns and hostas beneath a Gunnera manicata (Giant rhubarb).
From its beginnings as a very small home run nursery, Lincolnshire Pond Plants has now become one of the UK’s most successful online aquatic nurseries. Dawn is passionate about taking water plant exhibits to major flower shows and the team have won several medals at RHS Malvern, RHS Hampton Court Palace and Gardener’s World Live in recent years.
Dawn really enjoys designing and building the exhibits with the help of her daughter-in-law Kayleigh. She said: “We are really looking forward to creating our biggest and most ambitious display at RHS Chelsea, which is the pinnacle of horticultural excellence.
“It’s a real honour to be the only pond and aquatic nursery exhibiting at the Show. We aim to demonstrate the huge variety of water plants that gardeners can enjoy whether they have a lake or a small pot pond on their patio. There are aquatic and moisture loving plants for everyone to enjoy whatever the size of their garden.”
We wish the team every success for their first RHS Chelsea and certainly hope that their fishing produces a medal.
