Goodbye 2025 nursery season and hello holidays

 Another page in my journal completed, recording our visit to Dawyck last week

You've seen these individually but here they are as they appear in my journal,

Acer 'Bloodgood' and a flower from my fishbone cactus

Another busy day in our last week of 2025. Isabel and I had a trip through to Clydeside Trading Society Ltd open day. Good to chat with some of the trades folks and have a conversation about the peatfree compost we use with Melcourt and chat to William at McLarens Nurseries Ltd stand. Also caught up my friend Sarah Fiona, which was a nice surprise.

Back to the nursery in the afternoon and thinned out more of the scrappy willows behind our composting area. We even extended the dead hedge which was not planned but works really well

I'm going to write a blog post over winter about the dead hedge and it's many advantages

Another big job off the to do list, to be fair its been on the list for a couple of years! This goat willow in the woodland garden has got really big and I wanted to give the lovely hazels, birch and particularly the interesting Betula alleghaniensis I planted two years ago more space and light. It developed a significant lean this year so I wanted to get it down under control before it fell down. A nice sharp saw makes up for not being as young as I used to be and I had it cut down before we opened at 10am and when Fiona arrived we got it chopped up and into the dead hedge extension. Big thanks to Fiona for helping wrestle the trunks into place. As you know nothing is ever wasted here and if we can re-use and recycle we will. The dead hedge is filling up nicely giving a home to all sorts of creatures. The trunks have been used as new edging to the shade border which sits between the track and woodland garden

Well that's all Folks for 2025! Can you believe it’s the end of October already? I can't, in fact I’m not sure where this year went!

Thank you so much to all our customers who visited the nursery and gardens this year, who purchased from us and all the support and positive encouragement through the year, its all very much appreciated. Running a business is not easy these days so the support we get is so important, every purchase you make makes it easier to keep going so please keep supporting all your local independent businesses. We are off for a much needed break and then we will be back doing all the winter jobs, planning and working to make 2026 even better.

A huge thank you to Fiona and Isabel for all their work, enthusiasm and great company this year, especially as I wasn’t well in the first part of the year, they really picked up the slack when I was not feeling great. Also thank you to our volunteers Erin and Shannon who joined us through the year, they were great company and enthusiastic. As well as all the usual nursery work which grows as the nursery grows we also put up a new boundary fence, a new bridge, gate and entrance, build 3 new polytunnels and all the paths, irrigation and everything that goes with them, including filling with plants, a new tool shed, a dead hedge and a lot of tree work. To end the season and have all our young plants and propagation under cover for winter is amazing. No wonder we are tired! Thanks also to Dan, Kyle and Betty for all their help with the polytun,nels and keeping an eye on the shop while we covered the tunnels

And of course David who manages to fit in the nursery amongst his own business, writing books as David Dodds Author and flying, without his hard work we wouldn’t be where we are with such a huge leap forward with all the infrastructure this year.

I also want to say how great it is to see Whitmuir alive and busy again with lot going on. The café has a great buzz with good food, cakes and coffee, the Whitmuir Farm Shop is lovely to shop in (very tempting) and always has interesting food and a great butchery. Lots of events going on and also welcome to Alex and her team who have brought the Reuse, Repair & Share Hub at Whitmuir, a fantastic resource which fits in so well with all that we do at Quercus and Whitmuir, a great collection of businesses and of course lots to do for all our collective visitors to whitmuir.

Anyhoo enough blethering from me, take care for now

Big thanks from the Quercus team x

Rounding up of the last week of our 2025 season and I wanted to say thanks to everyone who came in to shop and to say hi and good bye before we closed on Sunday. We had a busy last week (of course) but a lovely relaxing last day together after getting lots of long planned tasks done in the previous days

The nursery was put to bed for winter and this involves quite a few different things – Isabel emptied the last of the tables in the sales area, outing plants away in the stock beds and stock taking them. I brought in all the signs in the gardens and nursery, cleaned them and made a note of some that need replaced. Sadly some have been damaged, so an extra cost to replace these so our customers keep getting important info about our plants and gardens. The wee shop was emptied and stock take done, with everything stored away for winter and some put aside for our Christmas pop up shops

In the gardens Isabel planted some bulbs in the gardens to bulk up plantings for next spring. I also cut down the leaning goat willow in the woodland garden which was getting too big. Fiona and I got it all cut up and put in the new dead hedge area. I have some planting plans bubbling around my head for this cleared area, exciting

We also did some last minute propagation, especially when the sedums produce little plantlets on the old stems, which are just asking to be potted into plug trays to grow on in the tunnel. Some Molinia were lifted from the blocks of Molinia in the long stock bed border and then split and potted for stock. Isabel planted some acorns and chestnuts, so hopefully we will be able to do a wee range of native trees going forward

On Thursday Isabel and I headed through to the Clydeside Trading Open day, this is where we buy various supplies including our compost and pots from through the year. We chatted to suppliers and friends, it was good to catch up and connect

We also cut back more of the scrappy willows behind the office and compost bins back, incorporating the off cuts into the now extended dead hedge. This area has completely changed this area, looking not only tidier but a more efficient use of space too and our small birds and insects will thank us for more habitat

Lastly our last day was wet and windy so we spent the day in the office, chatting, having a laugh, eating cake and sorting through all the bags of seeds we have collected from the gardens. This year we had a bumper collection, which is exciting. They are now all stored in seed packets, ready to be sown in spring

I am now off on holiday and already making plans for Quercus in 2026

I did check they were on the right side of the fence

propagating sedums

Great food at the Whitmuir evening event

Crab apples in the orchard

Aster ageratoides 'Asran'

Cortaderia selloana 'Pumila'

Miscanthus sinensis 'Kleine Silberspinne'

Plantago major 'Purple Perversion'

Cake for the last day

Sorting seeds and chatting, a lovely way to spend the last day

Its all been to much for some

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