Event: Tour Bury Lane's huge houseplant greenhouse

Love houseplants? Don't miss this open weekend at the Melbourn farm shop

With their sales continuing to soar in the UK’s garden centres - leaping another 30% in 2021 alone, according to latest statistics - houseplants have never been so hot. Opening its magnificent glasshouse to the public this month, throughout the weekend of October 1 and 2, Melbourn’s Bury Lane Farm Shop is officially one of the country’s biggest houseplant growers - and, says managing director Will Clayton, also one of the best.

“We believe passionately in sustainability and can provide customers with a more environmentally friendly alternative to what is currently available,” he says. “Almost all the plants currently available for sale in the UK are grown in peat in Holland, using gas for heating, and then imported at great environmental and financial cost. We grow beautiful houseplants in growing media that we recycle from waste coir using renewable heat.”

With 30-and-counting varieties grown in the Bury Lane glasshouse - ranging from classic metre-tall Monsteras and disc-leafed Pileas, better known as the Chinese ‘money plants’, to more unusual types of Philodendra and Alocasia - visitors to the open event will be able to take tours and talk to the growers about how the plants are propagated and tended, as well as shop.

With research suggesting that houseplants can boost happiness, “we find there are wonderful therapeutic benefits from nurturing a living plant and seeing it grow,” adds Will, “as well as the satisfaction of gorgeous home decoration and increased oxygenation. We also have some sensational Aloe Vera, which are wonderful for use as a natural moisturiser and burn treatment. Mine lives in the kitchen and is invaluable for my clumsy fingers!”

* For more visit burylanefarmshop.co.uk