As we celebrate this milestone, we invite you to join us in reminiscing with our Otter teams as they share their cherished memories, reflections, and emotions from their time at Otter Garden Centres.
I’ve been working at Otter since 29th June 1992, 32 years this year!
I started straight from school, after my GCSEs. I’d always worked on my family’s farm and also helped out a family friend who had a little nursery. I sent a speculative CV into Otter and the friend gave me a great reference, and Otter took me on.
I began in the propagation area of the nursery in Ottery St Mary, then moved to other departments taking on more and more responsibility. Around 18 years’ ago Jacqui (Taylor) talked to me about what I was doing, and formally made me Nursery Manager.
I oversee all the growing at Ottery, where we grow 50% of the bedding, 40% of the herbaceous plants and 95% of the shrubs, roses and climbers that our garden centres sell to customers. I work less in bedding as we have Richard to oversee this, there’s so much to do there.
I’ve worked closely with Malcolm, who started Otter with Marilyn, then his grandson Arron, and now our Group Plant Manager Dawid. I actually started work here two months before Arron was born! In fact, I’ve seen Malcom and Marilyn’s grandchildren take their first steps in the business, Arron, Sabine and now Lara who works in warehousing and stock control.
There is always something new in the nurseries, either completely new plants or existing varieties that have been improved.
The range and type of plants available have increased. We’re certainly growing more these days than we used to, and we have more polytunnels on site.
It’s a really nice atmosphere. People come and go but I’ve always had good colleagues with a great work ethic. And I just like being outside.
The nursery team has around 12 permanent members of staff who work three to five days a week.
Each year we take on 8 or so seasonal staff, sometimes people needing to fill a stop gap in their career or retired folk. We have one retired chap who comes back each year for three days a week.
We are steadily changing processes. We have more rainwater harvesting tanks which collect water off the buildings to use in the nurseries. And we’ve introduced driplines which are more efficient, they drip water directly into individual pots which saves more water than the older style sprinkler system.
The nurseries are moving towards peat free compost, we’re currently using reduced peat but trialling the best ways to use peat free. For quick growing crops there’s little difference, but for crops that take longer, more feed needs to be added, and we have to water more regularly.
In some nursery areas we purely use biological controls, bio stimulants that act as a feed and stimulate plants to grow. These are stronger plants with good pest resistance. There are other measures, for example we leave stinging nettles in the hedges around the site to attract caterpillars and ladybirds, which also helps control aphids.
In the old days, when it was somebody’s birthday, they usually got thrown in a bucket of water!
Or if they were working in the poly tunnels, we’d turn the irrigation on. I managed to avoid this as my birthday is in January.
A huge thank you goes out to Kev for sharing his wonderful memories with us.
His stories truly bring the spirit of Otter Garden Centres to life! We’re so grateful for his dedication and passion over the past 32 years.
Keep an eye out for more heartwarming tales from our amazing team as we continue our 60th Anniversary celebrations!
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