Victoriana Nursery Gardens is the distillation of the Shirley family's many years experience of serving the gardeners of the United Kingdom. The Shirley family tree reveals that way back in the early 1700's a branch of the family were seed merchants - how interesting family history can be!

.Jeremy and Joan Shirley started their first mail order nursery, in Surrey originally, in 1958 - but moved to Challock in 1963.

Whilst they describe themselves as 'recycled teenagers' they still contribute much to the day to day work on this busy family nursery.

Stephen, their son (seen here with Polar) joined the family business in 1985 on leaving school. Stephen now heads up the family team.

In the early 1990's it was decided to move the nursery to a larger site. Work commenced in 1993 with the nursery move taking place in 1994.

Serena (Stephen's wife) joined in 2004 and has been on a fast horticultural learning curve! Serena oversees the mail order processing and day to day management of the office. With a background in commercial catering equipment Serena has also been the driving force behind our sister company - Crocks & Pots - supplying commercial quality cookware to the home consumer.

Molly (Serena & Stephen's first child) was born in 2003. She 'helps' wherever she can and is learning fast!

Milly was born in August 2005 and has already started making a 'contribution' on the nursery

And then of course there is the 'extended family' which in most other organisations would be called staff ! At 11am each day everything stops and we all sit down for a coffee and a chat.

All in all we're a friendly bunch, happy in what we do and with a genuine pride in what we produce.

So What Do We Grow?

With just under fifty years experience of supplying seeds and plants to the Nation's gardeners it really is true to say we are passionate about gardens and gardening! Unlike some web-based mail order 'nurseries' and 'seed merchants' we actually grow most of what we sell - rather than simply acting as a distribution house for bought in goods - and what's more we welcome visitors.

In the Summer months our Fuchsia house is a picture. We now grow over 600 varieties of Fuchsias including hardy, basket and bush varieties. In 2005 our Fuchsias (along with a lot more of our plant life) were purchased by the Royal Household for Windsor Castle, Clarence House and Royal Ascot 2006.

Simply called the 'big house', within here we a grow a very wide range of vegetable plants, perennials and border plants for fulfilment of our mail order plant sales. During the Summer months an area of the greenhouse is also used for our tomato and specialist vegetable trials. We also save seed for future sales.

One thing we firmly believe in is that all plantlife we send out to our mail order friends should be fully hardened off. To this end we believe in moving all plants outside to harden off before we consider them ready for sales and mail order dispatch.

Visitors to our nursery and plant centre (we are proudly not a garden centre) will find an even wider range of plants than we offer by mail order including ornamental trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants. That said, our full 'home delivery' range is available for purchase including vegetable seeds, vegetable plants, pond plants and other aquatics - and of course our ever increasing range of fruit trees, fruit bushes and vines.

The very vegetable seeds and vegetable plants we offer can be seen growing here on our own show vegetable garden - and of course we all eat the produce! We genuinely know the growing habits and flavours of what we sell so can confidently advise our customers.

After the success and interest our Vegetable Garden has attracted we doubled it in size early in 2006; this is now virtually a full time job for Brian Gray, Deputy Heady Gardener, under the careful guidance of Jeremy Shirley. 2006 also saw us make a start on an extensive fruit garden which will be added to and mature in the next few years along with the planting of demonstration hedges of all the hedging plants we offer.

We have to say we believe we are unique in being the only UK based nursery to grow and show their full range of vegetables, fruit and hedging for evaluation by both our staff and customers. Our commitment to genuine 'hands on' experience of growing, and knowledge of the taste and characteristics of our range simply cannot be equalled in the UK by any other nursery, garden centre or seed merchant!