We've started a plant nursery in France

Debbie and John moved to France in February 2013 and we hit the ground running.

They did a total move, selling their home in the UK and launching their new horticultural business - a plant nursery and a gardening service - in the beautiful Tarn-et-Garonne department of South West France.

In their own words, here's Debbie and John's story.

Back in the UK we ran our own multi-faceted horticultural business (growing alpines and perennials, running a gardening service, and delivering gardening workshops at schools, nurseries and children’s centres). We lived in a nice house in a nice village and had great friends and family around us, but we wanted something more.

The space and outdoor lifestyle of France appealed to us, as did the rural community and pleasant social values. We were fed-up with the busy commute each morning and the high overheads of renting land for growing – we wanted to work from home, building up our nursery on our own land. We also wanted to work in the sunshine rather than the rain!

We were confident that all would be well. John has a solid horticultural background, having worked in a number of plant nurseries as well as a variety of gardens, both public and private, and we researched our area well, choosing a part of France that is not so heavily touristed as to be unappealing to us, but has enough holiday properties and a big enough local ex-pat community to provide a good client base.

We knew that, while we were keen to integrate into French society, it would the ex-pats that we would focus on, as while we have been warmly welcomed by our French friends and neighbours, and do have some French customers, the concept of gardening is still a relatively new one to the French. Mostly, their gardens are practical, for growing food, be it fruit trees, vegetables or chickens.

We began work immediately, focussing first on our gardening business, for instant income and cash flow. The nursery side of things is something we are developing more gradually. Our eventual aim is to do less gardening and more nursery work: some direct sales, opening to the public for a few days a week, and also mail order.

There have been a number of issues to work around, but on the whole, we’re really pleased with our progress over this first year.

One of the biggest obstacles is French bureaucracy, and copious amounts of paperwork. As we were keen to begin working immediately and wanted to make sure we were conforming to the laws and procedures of our new country, we employed an English-speaking accountant who was able to deal with the legalities of our business start-up (and also register us on the relevant health and social systems). By delegating this responsibility, we were able to concentrate immediately on the marketing side of things, and for this, the nature of the ex-pat community over here is very advantageous. After initial marketing activity found us a number of clients, word of mouth kicked in, and we now have over 30 gardening customers!

Things are done a bit differently in France. Nothing is hurried, it can take some time for things to happen, and if your timing is off, well, you just have to wait! We’ve never experienced being turned out of a gardening shop (money in-hand and eager to purchase our supplies) and being told to come back in a couple of hours after lunch, but that’s exactly what happened on our first attempt at buying potato tubers for our new veggie beds. The French lunch break (you can’t call it an hour, as it’s at least two hours, often more) is something you soon get used to, and the sooner you do so, the less wasted journeys you have.

Dealing with wholesale suppliers is also tricky. After years of communicating electronically, it came as a bit of a surprise to find that the French don’t really do email. After a bit of searching, you can sometimes find an email address, but don’t expect a reply any time soon! Without the use of non-verbal communication to make sense of our developing French language skills, communicating by phone is “tres difficile,” but is something that, from necessity, we’re getting better at.

Compost prices are another barrier. With peat reserves located in Northern Europe, compost is very expensive (which explains the higher cost of plants over here). Yet strangely, peat-free growing, which we did in the UK, is not commonplace. We’re currently exploring the practicalities of producing our own peat-free compost. We’ll start-off doing this just for our own use, but would like to research the possibility of doing this commercially.

Challenging growing conditions extend to soil conditions as well. We’re finding two types of gardens over here: rock or clay. When first attempting to plant-up our new veggie patch (we finally managed to purchase our potato tubers) we discovered that we only had an inch of soil before we hit solid rock. We counteracted this by buying in 10 tonnes of top soil (more tricky phone calls in French – we really didn’t want to get this wrong and end up dumping 10 tonnes of earth half a mile along the lane in our neighbour’s garden). As we grow in pots for our nursery, the soil isn’t such a problem for us professionally, though we did want to plant our mother plants in the ground, as well as doing our bit of self sufficiency with the pottager, so we’ve used the bought-in soil to create herbaceous borders and raised beds.

Other environmental factors that are different from the UK are the extreme temperatures. We brought a number of plants over from the UK to start-off our nursery but we are also investigating new ranges, exploring what grows well over here. Plants need to survive lows of minus 16 in the winter and highs of 40 degrees in the summer. We grow everything outside, for hardy, good quality plants, and don’t force anything on. So far, our alpines and perennials are doing really well!

Contact details:

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.lejardindesespiemonts.fr

Twitter: @jardinespiemont

Facebook: lejardindesespiemonts

Comments

[A very jealous landscaper !]

Fantastic. Every admiration for what you have done and hope you can get the French gardening.

Please continue to Blog your experiences for us all

[Eugene Baston]

Well done to the both of you, a great challenge which I'm sure you'll make an excellent success of.

Eugene

[BlueDaisyUK]

A great blog!

Knowing both Debbie & John and having worked with John,I can't recommend them highly enough. If you're in France you just have to go and see their nursery and support them. If you're in the UK get ready for their mail order service!!

I will certainly be making a visit at some point...I promise :)

Congrats to you both xx

[Helena Griffiths]

Hello Debbie & John,
I found your website looking for a specimen Corylus Cobnut for a client.
I am a Garden Designer & Horticulturist based in Cirencester, England. However the clients live near Agen, France.
I met with the clients at Dobbies Garden Centre, Cirencester where I am based as a Horticultural Advisor. The clients were looking to purchase a 'Cobnut' to back to their home of 14 years in southwest France, where they enjoy growing various nut producing trees.
I assured them I would source a local supplier, could you help? If so I have permission to share the fellow expats details with you.
I am personally very impressed you made the move to set up your plant nursery abroad.
Kind Regards,
Gardens by Helena
[email protected]
Designer & Horticulturist