PROFILE FEATURE
It’s a growing thing… Entrepreneurship is a quality that courses through the veins of the Rogers family. For them it is a natural character trait and it bubbles over into healthy exuberance carrying others along in its wake! Bert and Dorothy moved to Peterborough with Combex, the toy firm, after starting their married life in leafy Selsdon in Surrey. Leaving Cherry Tree Green they set up home in a newly built bungalow in what was North Dorothy and Bert Rogers Rd, Northborough, Northamptonshire. Really? Not for long! Bert bought his influence to bear and in tribute to 1971, Bert attended the Lyall & Co sale at The Three Northborough Castle the road was renamed Castle Tuns and snapped it up! Initially the whole plot was Drive and that it has remained. In honour of his new let to R. M. Addy to cultivate. but in December 1975 home Bert, now Sales Manager for the company, the first block of glass went up and Keith activated the would answer the phone ‘Lord Northborough!’ and later horticultural skills he had learnt at Parigo. Their first when he moved to Deeping he became ‘Baron of Back house on the site was built in 1976. With brother Tony Lane’! who initially continued to work at Perkins, the family had a 4.00am start three mornings a week. Dorothy Max Reich, owner of the company but without a left to finish while the boys returned to their day family of his own, had intended to leave the company jobs, leaving her with the trailer to make deliveries. to Bert and two other colleagues. Indeed, he may Flowers grown outside were harvested in September/ have been visiting the Rogers’ to discuss this future; October while those under glass were cropped year Dorothy had bought a Doulton dinner service in round. As business grew, the family supplied markets anticipation! But before any documents were signed, and shops throughout the country with their he sadly passed away and his brother briefly took over chrysanths – they were also sold locally at The before selling to Richard Beacham. With ambitions to Goat by Ken and Norah Dyer. At the height of become ‘Mr Toy‘, Beacham grew the business group their business the company had two lorries and to become Dunbee Combex Marx and then, against delivery drivers and set up an import business Bert’s advice, purchased Louis Marx America. But the bringing in flowers from the four corners of the cost of raw materials was escalating and in 1980 the world. On one occasion they featured on the company filed for bankruptcy. BBC news when a consignment of carnations from Columbia was impounded at the airport, But with his mortgage paid and a son in the growing cocaine stored in the wooden bar which held trade, when one of Les Taylor’s fields in Back Lane, the stems in place. On another occasion roses Deeping St James, came up for sale In November destined for the Valentine’s Day market missed 20
a vital rendezvous with a delivery truck at the airport and a local friend undertook a 1,000-mile round trip to Glasgow and all stops in between! The roses got through – romance hadn’t died! At the height of their business in the 1990s another house was built on the site, the land was divided and the property gained extra space. Caravanning had been popular in the family; Alison’s parents had been members of the Caravan Club since 1963 and Alison and Keith themselves members since 1983. So in 1994 they started to develop the area behind the bungalow and created five pitches around an oval in the centre - each pitch looking outwards and fully serviced with an electric hook up at a time when this was yet to be the norm. But by 2008 Border Nurseries were finding that their customer base was shrinking, and florists’ shops were under pressure from the supermarkets and so the decision was made to develop the caravan storage side of the business. This was developed to a very high standard with a state of the art security system, devised initially for Border and now being rolled out in sites across the country. It was awarded a CaSSOA gold site from the outset and this year became the first CaSSOA compound in the country to be awarded the new exemplar Platinum grading.
