Did you know that our nursery is totally off grid? Here at Le Jardin Créatif we have no mains water to our property or to our nursery and we do not have any mains electricity up at the nursery.

In the beginning we started with a couple of watering cans and one, 1000L water storage tank or ‘cuve’. We quickly realised that we needed more water and a more efficient way of watering. We now have over 25000L capacity for storing collected rain water – we have installed a simple solar powered system with a small solar panel, battery and a 12v pump so that we have pressure to use a hose – but we still do this by hand because hand watering is much more water efficient than any automated system and it means that we can assess all of our plants each evening when we water. It takes about an hour for us to water the nursery each evening during the hot weather. We rarely water our garden or potager and we use ‘grey’ water collected from our shower and sink for this purpose.

This winter we have also been experimenting with LED lighting. These low energy ‘grow lights’ can run off 12v and have specially adapted colours to provide the right wavelengths of light for plant propagation and the early stages of plant growth.

• 

• 

• 

• 

We propagate everything ourselves on the nursery using traditional techniques and we do not use pesticides so everything is low key and low impact on the environment. By producing all of our plants by hand in small batches we are able to be competitive on price and offer varieties that are a little bit different and our niche is hardy herbaceous perennials, ornamental grasses, herbs and aromatics, ‘ornamental edibles’ and a few unusual shrubs.

We like to be able to offer planting advice to our nursery customers who come along on Saturdays with a range of gardening questions, we love to share our passion for plants, our expertise and our years of experience.

We also do on site consultancy if you would like more detailed advice on your own garden – please see our web page ‘Garden design and consultancy’ for our range of services and prices.