A FAMILY-RUN nursery in Holsworthy has recently celebrated its 25th year at the Malvern Spring Festival 2016.

Border Alpines, based in Holsworthy, specialises in alpines, choice bulbs and dwarf perennials.

The nursery is a former winner of the RHS Farrer Trophy at the Festival, and has won numerous awards at other flower shows. Border Alpines’ plants are grown in the South West, and the nursery had around 200 varieties available at the recent show.

Owners, Jan and Carl Lowe, have been growing and selling plants for over 35 years, starting out attending small shows, and gradually moving on to bigger shows like the Malvern Spring Festival to generate a great source of income, later expanding their small stand to a larger one featuring a vast variety of plants.

Starting the business in Shropshire, Jan and Carl soon found their children growing up and moving away. Coming to the decision that they wanted to downsize and have a smaller nursery, they moved to Holsworthy, where they sell their produce on their website, and attend various shows.

Jan hopes that in the future, they may hold plant sales and are currently not in retail.

To celebrate their 25th year at the show, Jan and Carl presented the 25th customer on each day of the show with a special gift of appreciation, which was a handcrafted bag, made by Jan, holding a collection of beautiful plants.

Jan told the Post that, despite the good weather during the show, the previous ‘dreadful’ weather had had an effect on the flowering of some plants, resulting in the colour stall not doing as well as it has done at previous shows.

However, Jan said: “It has been a success, we usually do well each year. It’s truly amazing that we find local people from Devon and Cornwall coming along to the show, from Tiverton, Launceston, Hols­worthy, and more.

“This year, we had a lot of people getting the details for our website, and we gave out little business cards that can be stuck to the fridge at home.”

Carl has been breeding new plants to introduce to the market, often named after members of the family. The latest of these is ‘geranium cinereum Melody’, named after his love of music and was launched in 2014.

Jan and Carl’s family of around 13 come together each year for the Malvern Spring Festival, and Border Alpines will continue to take part in the show next year.