Our journey

Yvonne's Plants is based in Gosport, Hampshire, and run by Yvonne, an avid gardener and allotmenteer, who has been busily growing her own food for around 30 years.  It came about almost by accident really, back in 2010, with 2 paste tables at a local car-boot sale, as a way of shifting a few plants that were surplus to requirement in my back garden, but as with all things in the garden, it grew... 

In 2013 I approached the Bishops Waltham Garden Fair, told them my humble origins, and they took chance on me.  The gamble paid off and I was blown away by the response from the gardening public.  I couldn’t have survived the day without the help I had from family, fellow stall-holders and the organizing committee in helping me keep up with the volume of customers that day.  It was on the strength of that one day that we then found ourselves being invited (at only 2 weeks notice) to the Stansted Park Garden Show, something I had never dreamed of at that point.  2013 was certainly a baptism by fire, and each year things steadily got bigger.  

The next big thrill came at the Bishops Waltham show in 2016, with winning the 'Best Plant Stall', where I was surprised to be ambushed by gardening guru Andy McIndoe and several ladies on the events organizing committee.  It had been so busy on the stand that I had been unaware of the tannoy announcement until I was summoned to the front of the stand for the obligatory photo! It was a far cry from our first attendance at that show just 3 years previously when I had no idea just what I'd gotten us into and survived by the skin of my teeth! Since then, many lessons have been learned and I now have a small army of family and friends come and support me on the day.

My little garden didn’t have elastic fences to keep expanding with my needs - even my shed roof was used for growing strawberries - but a chance introduction lead to another big leap forward for the 2017 season, when I seized the opportunity to relocate to a commercial greenhouse in Bishops Waltham.

It was a dilapidated shell when I took it on, but it soon got a new lease of life.  With the increased space also came the challenge of managing extreme temperature changes and keeping up with the increased watering needs in a completely different growing environment. 

On the positive side it also afforded me the opportunity to grow much bigger and stronger plants, which meant we could look to keep growing and selling plants beyond our usual finishing point in June, and this saw our first appearance at Chilli Festivals later that summer.  

By this stage some of our chilli plants are upto 3ft tall, and covered with ripening fruit, and also giving customers a chance to buy freshly picked chillies harvested from our greenhouse.

2018 saw us winning ‘Best Plant Stall’ at the Gilbert White Unusual Plant Fair, capitalising on our success in the Chilli Festival scene, and attending even more prestigious events, like the Blenheim Palace Food Festival and the Great Dorset Chilli Festival. 

After trialling fresh produce the previous year we brought much more of it to the summer events, and the reaction to our bags of brightly coloured tomatoes and chillies was fantastic, as it gave people the chance to taste all the different varieties that we offer for sale as young plants earlier in the spring. 

2019 saw us attend even more Food Festival events and summer Farmers Markets, having grown even more fresh produce.  It also meant that we had people growing their own tomatoes for the first time, based on the strength of our fresh ones they tasted last year, and having even more produce for sale in the summer months meant we could entice even more people away from the super-market veg aisles. It’s fantastic to get such positive feedback from so many customers, and that makes all the long hours worth it.  

As part of the 'chilli scene' I got to know Bernie, of 'Chef Bernie Sauces' fame, and I'd been able to supply him with a small amount of Trinidad Scorpion chillies (scary hot ones, believe me!) in 2018. 

So when he asked me to grow a whopping 30kg of them the following year, I embarked on another experiment....  You could say it was a success, with the plants reached around 8ft tall, nearly as wide, and dripping with blistering hot Scorpions! 

Another little sideline was selling chillies picked to order, via my Ebay shop, giving me the chance to reach a whole nation of chilli-heads.  I'm not able to send the plants by post as the transport system is just too brutal for them to survive intact. 

The next new venture came about completely by chance when I was approached about giving a talk for a gardening group, and I said 'why not...?'  Public speaking really wasn't something I ever envisaged doing, but it was a fantastic chance to enlighten keen veg growers just what goes on behind the scenes in a small nursery, and encourage them to shop locally with small artisan growers who are passionate about what they grow.

2020 was certainly a year that none of us will forget.  It brought some epic challenges when all our events were cancelled with just 5 days before the first event, with over 15,000 plants sat waiting on the greenhouse benches when lockdown started.  So instead of customers coming to events, I took my van on the road and started my own delivery service for customers all across Hampshire, while those living closer to home came along in the evenings to collect their orders directly from me.

We all made it through the spring lockdown safely, and it was so good to see everyone again at the summer markets, even if the bigger events weren't able to go ahead.  The kindness and generous support from so many people made it all worth the struggle of working 120 hours a week to get through lockdown.

Unfortunately, there was a sting in the tail of 2020 for me though, as my business was made homeless when I had to move out of the big commercial greenhouse site.  I began hunting for a 'forever home' for my business, but in the meantime I returned to my garden-based roots and will be operating from home again.  To get through this tight spot, some wonderful friends are helping me out with some temporary space in their garden while I continue my search for a permanent base.

This temporary site has enabled me to keep growing plants pretty much as normal during spring 2021, and even though COVID restrictions meant that large events weren't going ahead, I got by with a relentless schedule of farmers markets instead.  It was such a huge relief in June 2021 to return to the Stansted Garden Show, and on the Friday morning when the show opened, it made my eyes water to think of all the obstactles and difficulties I'd endured to reach that point.  Relief just seemed too inadequate a word to sum all the emotions up, and this seemed to be a feeling that was shared by so many fellow stallholders, the customers, and the organisers alike.  It was a theme that continued thoughout the chilli festivals that followed in the summer, that it was so good to be back at big events and doing 'normal' things again.

Fast-forward and it's now 2023 and the pandemic is firmly in the rear-view mirror, things have settled down for me, but with it comes the acceptance that I will most likely not find a 'proper home' for my little enterprise. 

Between my own back garden and a friends garden, I'm now using a series of small glass greenhouses and a larger polytunnel.  While it may look spacious, it's really a bit of a squeeze to grow all the things I want to grow, and I'm glad I've got small feet because the pathways inside the tunnel shrink to literally a shoes width with all the trays of plants that need shelter from the unpredictable early spring weather.

As soon as the weather settles, the young plants are shuffled onto the benches outside the tunnel.  From late April, the tunnel sides are rolled up and the doors are open 24/7 as this gets the plants hardened off quicker, making a tougher plant with the best chance of thriving in the customers garden.

Then begins the next next stage of life in the tunnel - the tomato plants that started life at home now migrate into their big pots here, along with all the chilli plants that are needed for the summer chilli festival season.  It's a battle to keep up with the watering and feeding, with plants growing literally an inch a day.

Over the last few years the less-traditional plants have been gaining in popularity, with citrus, olives and bananas accounting for an increasing proportion of sales.  That has allowed me to slowly widen their range to include some of varieties that are so hard to find elsewhere, like bergamot, limequat, yuzu and finger limes.  I'm pretty sure it's the influence of TV cookery programs with their increasingly diverse ingredients.  I certainly get a fair number of chefs asking me for hard-to-find plants for their kitchen gardens.

Growing bananas initially began as an experiment a few years ago, but has now turned into a bit of a passion for me.  After a lot of experimenting and learning, I now have over a dozen varieties available for sale, from hardy ones to tropical ones, some dwarf varieties, others are definitely not!  As you might imagine, not all of them make it into the trailer for market days.  So if you are after something really spectacular for your garden, please get in contact.

A consequence of growing bananas, citrus and olives has been that I am often asked if I grow other tropical plants.  This has lead me to trial a few more things, with a view to offering more  plants that would look perfectly at home in a tropical or jungle garden, but still be a viable plant for gardeners in the UK with our capricious weather.  I'll be adding a new section of plants to the website soon, please check back in spring 2024 for more information.  You'll also find me listing some of these plants on Facebook Marketplace as that has opened up another sales stream for me.