Our gardening season has reached the point where our first seedlings (various tomato varieties) need potting up and the queue to be in the second batch of seeds to get started is beginning to grow quite long. Today we took a trip down to the local branch of Notcutts at Nuneham Courtenay (I would link to their website but they seem to be in the midst of redeveloping it at the moment and only have a chain-wide holding page in place).
Most of the things on offer can be found at any garden centre (you know: plants, seeds, garden tools, kitchenware, books, clothing…) but the service that particular attracted us was pot recycling. In the car park, just round the corner from the shop exit, is an area where people are invited to leave their old plant pots for recycling. I don’t think there is an official sign to say “help yourself” (possibly not, since you can spend money on shiny new pots inside the shop) but we tend to visit this bank for withdrawals rather than deposits.
It is a win all round though; as well as an excellent collection of pots that we will be able to make good use of for our seedlings, we also came away with compost, horticultural grit, a garden tool and a flowering current that will form an important part of Jane’s plans for a fire-themed bed at the front.