Malcolm Hockham’s private nursery is so well hidden – through a hole in a hedge and beyond a high, stone wall – that you need detailed directions and a bit of luck to find it, but when you step into it, you’ll be amazed, says Jenny Laue.

MANY people still think that it is difficult to grow rare and exotic plants in the North of England but – even if you don’t believe in the global warming theories – this is no longer true.

Garden enthusiast Malcolm Hockham is the man to prove that you can successfully grow the most delicate foreign species as far north as Barningham in North Yorkshire, where he established his private nursery, Plantsman’s Corner, with hundreds of rare plants.

Malcolm, who also runs the Eggleston Hall nursery with business partner Gordon Long, started Plantsman’s Corner as a hobby three years ago for a bit of a challenge.

“There is a very famous gardener, Geoff Smith, and this used to be part of the garden he started as a lad. It was very run down. I set myself a six-year project to turn it around.

I’m now half-way through,” says Malcolm.

“Three years ago I wanted this to grow the more technically difficult plants, plants that need grafting, that need time and effort. Nowadays we have garden centres and quite frankly they do the ordinary garden plants, stuff that’s easy to grow. I don’t want to buy plants from Holland, put a price on it and sell it because then I would be nothing better than a glorified sales assistant. I want to grow the more challenging stuff.

“Our climate is changing and as the climate changes, the plants that we can grow in the UK change too.

Here at the nursery I’m trying to see what we can get away with, to see which species have become hardy now that weren’t before,” he says.

The nursery itself is like an Aladdin’s cave full of wonderful species rarely seen in the UK. It’s been Malcolm’s aim to gather together some of the most beautiful plants the world has to offer. On entering the nursery, it is difficult to know where to look first because there is so much to catch the eye.

Even to me, a total gardening novice, it all seems weird and wonderful and totally fascinating. To those who know a thing or two about propagating plants, it probably looks like seventh heaven.

The nursery’s one-acre plot is surrounded entirely by a three-foot wall, which creates a very protective climate, judging by the way Malcolm’s plants prosper. Every available space is being utilised. There are hundreds of pots containing a huge variety of Japanese maple, Bhutan pines and hollies. There are hostas, beautiful delphiniums, cornus, flowering dogwoods, rare fuchsias and even Chinese rhododendrons, with their broad, velvety leaves.

One of the rarest plants Malcolm has in his nursery is a Japanese angelica, or aralia elata variegata, which he says is extremely difficult to graft – setting a shoot of a plant into the stem of another – as it is hollow- stemmed.

Picking our way carefully through Plantsman’s Corner, Malcolm also shows me the rather unusual fruit trees which he has trained to grow along either side of the paths at about knee height. Some of them were already growing fruit. Other fruit trees have been planted to grow up and over. In the future when they have grown a little bit more, Malcolm is planning to bind them together so that they will create an arch above the walkway – a pretty image, especially in spring when these trees will be in flower.

“Because the nursery is walled I can experiment a little bit more,”

says Malcolm, explaining why he’s training the trees at such a low level.

“I can play around with things, which is nice for me. It’s great not to worry about having to make a living off this nursery.”

But playing around with rare plants is not the only experiment he’s doing at his nursery. Everything you see has been planted with the environment in mind. A big part of Malcolm’s thoughts have gone into plans to run Plantsman’s Corner in an environmentally friendly a way as possible. This means he does not use pesticides or fungicides or chemical plant food. One way to keep down the weeds in his many plant pots is to use hemp mats, a new product he is trying this year.

They’re circular, with a hole in the middle that slots neatly around the young plant.

“All the maples I grow have these new hemp mats on top of the soil to stop the weeds and they also keep it evenly moist. I’ve been trying them this year and they are very effective.

Best of all, they are completely recyclable,”

Malcolm says.

In the three years he’s been working on Plantsman’s Corner Malcolm has achieved a lot, considering he only works there in his spare time, that he had to struggle against council planners, who objected to the erection of a simple polytunnel, and that he literally started from scratch.

Now, though, the tunnel houses some fascinating plants.

There is, for instance, the pretty meadow rue Hewitt from America, with its tiny pink flowers, or pleasant- smelling dictamnus albus, a socalled volatile from Asia, which is also sometimes called ‘burning bush’ as it exudes a flammable oil from the leaves and seed pods and if a flame is placed near, the oil will sometimes ignite without damaging the plant.

They share their space with long tendrils of vine, which will one day yield grapes which Malcolm hopes to make into wine.

Other plans for the future are to open the nursery to other gardeners.

From next spring Malcolm will open Plantsman’s Corner to the public twice a month, from April through to October. Until then, he is happy to spend his time surrounded by plants that have been sown, grown and grafted in North Yorkshire.

■ For more information on Plantsman’s Corner, log on to plantsmanscorner.co.uk, email malcolm@plantsmanscorner.co.uk or ring him on 07707-694310. For gardening advice, tune into Malcolm’s radio show, The Potting Shed, on Radio Teesdale, 102.1- 105.5fm, every Saturday from 7pm-9pm.