Undiscovered Coolings 2023

Plants will always take centre stage at Coolings, but we’d like to take you on a behind the scenes tour of all the supporting cast members! While plants are our passion, growing is

our talent and this booklet will provide you with a backstage pass to our on-site production nursery and heritage at The Gardener’s Garden Centre, Knockholt.

Life on our nursery Through the Seasons

Many of you choose to visit us for our knowledgeable staff and our large range and quality of plants, but did you know that we grow the majority of our plants ourselves on our Nursery at Rushmore Hill and smaller nurseries at Potted Garden Nursery and Wych Cross Garden Centre? Our 4.5 acre Nursery is hidden around the back of our site. You may have glimpsed a view of our production glasshouses and our massive reservoirs, whilst sitting outside in Arthurs Garden enjoying your lunch!

Those of you who know our history well, will know that we’ve been growing since the start of our journey back in 1913, when the business began with Arthur Cooling (Grandfather of Paul Cooling) growing a few market garden crops on an acre of land at the rear of Chislehurst High Street. Growing our own has always been a huge part of who we are, but now-a-days the production of over 200 varieties of roses, 300 varieties of shrubs, 600 varieties of herbaceous perennials, a range of trees and the majority of our bedding - has become much busier and more complex!

Spring Summer

The team ‘spring’ into action and are at their busiest at this time of year. We continue potting up plants and there is increased husbandry and care for plants already in production. April is our peak production month with over 40,000 bedding and hardy plants a week entering the production cycle. Our nursery is full to bursting and it is around this time that we invite customers to tour the nursery in all its glory (see back page for details). May is our peak selling month and production is still in full swing with many hours spent by the team watering, collating orders and maintaining plant husbandry.

Autumn

June sees the start of our autumn production with herbaceous perennials, pansies, primroses, cyclamen and chrysanthemums being our main focus. Staff will begin to take their holidays and make the most of a well-earned rest! We also use this time to visit plant trials and to look at new plant breeding as we begin to think about the next year’s production. This is also the time when we are judging all the community ‘In Bloom’ awards across Bromley, Sevenoaks, Maidstone, and Tonbridge & Malling. August is packed with autumn pansy and wallflower production, potting up shrubs and perennials and ordering roses (18 months in advance of when we need them in order for them to grow in time!).

Winter

In September, new plant availability catalogues are published so we can decide on what we want to grow for the next year and get those orders underway. Autumn production continues and as October hits we finalise plug, and liner orders, begin potting up roses, bare root perennials and senetti ready for the spring. We finish the autumn with paperwork –collating order confirmations, checking production plan sheets for the following year, stock taking pots and labels and ordering compost requirements ready for next year. We end the autumn by finishing all the rose potting.

You would think it would be a quiet time, but trust us, it isn’t! The winter months are spent maintaining and preparing. We carry out some husbandry and begin filling pots. It’s also our only opportunity to carry out repair works and check all our boilers and water systems to ensure they are working to capacity. The team begin the first months of the new year with filling patio containers and baskets ready for production, and checking pots and other stock needed for production have all arrived. By February, we will have begun production by sowing the first seeds.

Our Heritage 100 Years and Still Growing

Our passion for plants, alongside our appetite for growing our own, has been paramount for each of the three generations of Coolings at the helm, from when it was established by Arthur Cooling in 1913, through to moving to the Rushmore Hill site in 1990, the purchase of our Green & Pleasant site (now Coolings Lifestyle) in 2004 and more recently the Potted Garden site in 2017. The commitment and passion of the Coolings family has also spilled over to many of the staff that have worked for us over the years, seven of whom – who work across a diverse range of departments – have long since celebrated their 25-year anniversary at Coolings

The first photographic evidence of any horticultural undertaking is this picture of Arthur Cooling in 1913, behind a borrowed horse and plough, producing market garden crops such as cabbages, carrots and lettuce, on land behind what is now Belmont Parade in Chislehurst.

During the early 30s, the addition of a few greenhouses built from second hand materials and the hard work of Arthur and his wife Miriam, made it possible to grow tomatoes, together with a very limited amount of bedding plants, such as alyssum, lobelia and antirrhinums. When Arthur’s son, Michael, came on board in 1953 after completing horticulture college, he brought with him lots of new and innovative ideas, and the growing of simple flowering plants such as wallflowers, polyanthus, chrysanthemums, dahlias and forget-menots began to grow and grow.

Present Day

Today we are proud to be employee owned. 75% of the company is owned by the staff, with 25% still owned by the Cooling family.

How has our experience grown?

Since 1990 when we moved to Knockholt, there have been many innovative changes to the way we grow including:

☛ The digging of our reservoirs so we are more self-sufficient for our water requirements

☛ Growing plants in gutters suspended within the glasshouses to increase production space; we are growing one crop on top of another and when we hang our baskets that is three crops high!

☛ Installing machines to help with production. We had one potting machine which could produce up to 3,000 potted plants an hour, we now have two of these plus a robotic transplanter. This will prick out 10,000 plants an hour, meaning a task that used to take us a week can now be done in 3 days! Also, a tray filler which fills all the packs for the bedding plants, another job that used to be done by hand.

☛ Extended growing areas, additional polythene tunnels, further new additional glasshouses built in 2000 and our massive half an acre glasshouse known as House 6 built in 2014 where, as well as being full of growing plants for most of the year, we have events such as such as Craft Shows and Antiques Fairs. It also houses our logistics team fulfilling many online orders.

Would you like to see our Nursery at work?

Join us at 11am or 2pm on Tuesday 25th April 2023 for a FREE guided tour of our production Nursery.

You will be taken around our glasshouses by a member of the production team and we will show you how we manage to get 40,000 plants through our production cycle a week, as well as sharing our scheduling methods with you. It’s a great way to meet our team and see the machinery in operation, watch us potting up and see the work we do up close and personal.

The tours are free of charge, no need to book just pop along to Coolings

The Gardener’s Garden Centre, Rushmore Hill, Knockholt, Kent, TN14 7NN on the day and let reception know you are here.

Private tours for groups of 20+ are available on request, for more information please contact: Ian Hazon at ianhazon@coolings.co.uk or 01959 532269

Scan here to watch one of our potting machines in action!

Did you know?

There are two sides to the Nursery. Hardy nursery stock (shrubs, herbaceous, conifers, trees) and bedding including, the production of 6,000 hanging baskets a year!

Team Focus:

Name: Neil Russen

Position: Nursery Supervisor

Career/experience:

Neil joined us in 2001 following 17-years at H. Evans & Sons (the wholesale side of Ruxley Manor Garden Centre) working at both their sites at Sidcup and Hadlow growing flowering pot plants and bedding for the multiples.

Responsible for: At Coolings, Neil manages the hardy side of our nursery production team who are responsible for producing high standards of hardy shrubandry and fulfilling of garden centre orders for our hardy plant stock.

“My passion for horticulture has been passed down from my Grandfather who owned our old production site during WW2 (called The Spinney Nursery). I followed in his footsteps by starting my career in a garden shop in Sevenoaks High Street followed by an OND in commercial horticulture at Hadlow College in the early 80’s.”

Name: Helen Pert

Position: Bedding Supervisor

Career/experience: Helen joined us in 2007. After 11 years as a Veterinary Nurse, Helen decided to pursue her passion for gardening and change her path to follow a career in horticulture. Helen, as with most of the team, has completed her RHS level 2 Principles in Horticulture qualification and currently supervises the production of all our bedding.

Did you know?

11 staff are employed on our nursery, having between them over 100 years’ experience growing the Coolings’ way, and another 44 years’ experience elsewhere in the industry.

Weekly deliveries from our nursery in Knockholt are sent to our centres in Bearsted and Wych Cross to keep their benches full too!

Responsible for: Helen ensures that everyone has what they need in order to get the job done. It’s important that communication between the Nursery and the retail plant team is effective to maximise our efficiency. Helen and her team also work the production machinery – which during peak times can see them potting up around 15,000 plants a week and transplanting around 12,000 plugs an hour!

“I love the challenge that comes with working on the Nursery. Growing vast numbers of stock particularly during our peak times, can be daunting, but we always manage to meet the demand! It’s certainly never dull! The physical demand and practical nature of my job really suits my personality as well as working with my team”.

New for Spring 2023:

This spring we are excited to be growing some new varieties of bedding and hardy plants, look out for them in the shop!

New varieties of bedding plants:

New varieties of hardy plants:

Team Focus:

Name: Ian Hazon

Position: Production and Operations

Director

Career/experience: Ian joined Coolings in 1991 as Glasshouse Foreman when our growing facilities were located at Spinney Nurseries, further up into the village next to what is now Coolings Lifestyle.

It wasn’t long after Ian joined that we moved the nursery down to its current home at Rushmore Hill. Having the nursery on site had been a long-term goal of Michael Cooling to aid efficiency, reduce transport and provide modern facilities.

“Horticulture and Agriculture is something I have always been interested in from a very early age. I bought my first greenhouse at 12 when I realised that I could take a packet of seeds, grow plants and sell them for a profit. I had a few jobs on local farms during school holidays (the promise of driving a tractor always appealed) and on leaving school, I started work at a commercial bedding plant producer in Newington, Kent. Here I learned many important lessons, including production methods that I still use today. After a couple of years, I had enough experience and qualifications to be accepted into Hadlow Horticultural College where I studied commercial glasshouse crops. We are now producing more plants than ever for our sites so, to ensure a tight ship, the nursery team work closely together to ensure production requirements are met. We also spend time through the summer visiting our breeders to ensure we are still offering the very best plants available, something the Cooling family have always known was important”.

Rudbeckia ‘Sunbeckia’

Surfinia ‘Blue Lagoon Star’

Verbena ‘Pink Bicolour’

Trailing Mini Petunia ‘Double Lavender Shades’

Fuchsia (upright) ‘Diva’ Fuchsia (trailing) ‘Windchimes’

Buddleja ‘Lila Sweetheart’ Hemerocallis ‘Fooled Me’

Discover more of Coolings with a tour of our Garden Centres and Nurseries. Each of our sites are truly unique and definitely worth exploring, especially when we’re doing the driving!

Accompanied by our Operations Director Ian Hazon, our tour will take you to Coolings Potted Garden, and then onto Coolings Wych Cross for lunch at the Hybrid Tea Rooms.

Wednesday 17th May 2023

Departing from Coolings Rushmore Hill. The cost is £40 per person or £70 for two people, and includes a takeaway breakfast and sit-down lunch.

Depart Rushmore Hill at 9.30am (breakfast available for collection from 8.45am), return approximately 4.45pm.

Tuesday 6th June 2023

Departing from Coolings Rushmore Hill. Calling all rose lovers! Coolings Wych Cross grow roses for all our garden centres and we invite you to join us for a guided tour of the newly reinstated rose gardens, along with lunch at the Hybrid Tea Rooms. £35 per person or £60 for two people. Cost includes lunch. Depart Coolings Rushmore Hill at 10am return approximately 3.30pm.