On this page we will keep you up to date with the goings on at Crûg Farm Plants...

February 2010

RHS GOLD MEDAL AT RHS VINCENT SQUARE

It was very gratifying to be awarded a gold medal at this years RHS spring show in London. Edward Elves was pressed ganged to come out of retirement to help us put the display together. His experience was invaluable and assisted us greatly. Not forgetting our dear friend Tricia Hughes who hand wrote all of the plant names so beautifully for us and kept us watered and fed at the show, as well as her daughter Katlin who provided us all with food and lodgings in her Portobello apartment.

It was wonderful to meet so many established and potential customers and to put a face to our mailorder customers, who took the trouble to visit the stand.

It was a gruelling few days before the long drive home through the night. Thick snow and roads works was the order of the day. Arriving home at 3am When will spring arrive??

September 2009

Sue has been commissioned to go overseas, to the beautiful town of Lucca in northern Italy. Where she will team up with Ben Kettle from The World of Ferns. They will transport a wide selection of plants to the Murabilia Show held on 4th, 5th & 6th September 2009.

See www.murabilia.com for more information.

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LATEST UPDATE FROM LUCCA!!
Sue sweeps the board with a hat trick of awards. Acer sikkimense wins best plant in show.

Spring 2009

Spring has been very busy here. Lovely to see old friends and many new customers too. The Plant Addict programme has certainly alerted people to our presence. The mail order has been keeping us very busy and the overseas orders are going great guns.

Sue was delighted to be asked by Gardens Illustrated to review the two new books on Welsh Gardens. Discovering Welsh Gardens by Stephen Anderton and The Gardens of Wales by Helena Attlee. Some wonderful Welsh gardens are included. These books will certainly put Wales high on the list of places to visit.

May 2009

The annual Welsh Historical Garden Trust Plant Fair will be held here on Saturday 2nd with lots of old favourite nurseries and some interesting new ones.

Please note that the parking will not be in the usual field. The Police are no long allowed to come and help, new legislation prevent this! We have moved the parking to the field in front of the house so there will be no busy road to cross, look out for directions.

April 2009

The woodland walk on Good Friday was blessed with good weather and there was certainly a lot to see. We have since had Dan Hinkley here and as always it was a great success. He never fails to impress people with his whit and charm. The wonderful weather enabled us to have lunch on the lawn accompanied by an uninterrupted view of Snowdon through clear blue skies.

March 13th 2009: BBC2 Gardener's World

PLANT ADDICTS - A special one off programme introduced by Carol Klein on Friday 13th March at 8pm

(If you missed it you can still watch it on iPlayer) Tune in to BBC2 on Friday 13th March at 8pm and watch a programme called Plant Addicts! Yes you have got in one we are the addicts!! We were given a video camera by the BBC to take on our 2006 expeditions so you will be able to see extracts of us in the field (we hope). They spent a day filming here on the wettest day of 2007 when the rest of the country was flooded. So please do join Carol Klein as she seeks out the addicts, we are sure it will be entertaining.

Carol Klein and the film crew on a soggy July day at Crûg in 2007

Winter News

Well we have certainly been kept very busy over this winter period just trying to keep the plants warm. We have not experienced such cold temperatures for years. We have had temperatures of –10C.

It is very unusual for us to have penetrating frosts for such a long period (three weeks). It has meant that we have had to stay close to home in order to monitor everything. One good thing is that our wood shed is full. Bleddyn and I have been busy splitting and carrying wood to keep warm.

It has been interesting to study the plants and observe which ones do not seem to be bothered by this very cold weather. The first ones that come to mind are the Schefflera, I have a large macrophylla outside my kitchen window and the cold temperatures have not bothered it at all. It looks most majestic! In fact all the Schefflera that we have in the gardens are doing well. We have Pachysandra Crûg’s Cover as ground cover in different areas of the garden again  thriving. Dendropanax trifidus untouched by the cold, other Dendropanax we have had previously have not come through the cold. Our Fuchsia microphylla is flowering away on the Mound along side the Espeletia. We really must get back to Colombia to collect more seed of this plant. Curculigo is still standing proud.  One of the plants that Bleddyn would like me to mention is the Viburnum awabuki, we have it growing in two contrastingly different areas, the one which is growing in the shelter of the walled garden is not happy but the other growing on the very exposed south facing entrance to the nursery is thriving.