“Everything is planted with a suitcase!”
Steffie Shields meets horticulturalist Claire Rasell, a passionate plantswoman with an artist’s eye.
I bless the day I first crossed Rasell’s Nurseries threshold in Little Bytham, and now drop by on a regular basis.
What a delight to chat recently to Claire Rasell about her work, which I increasingly admire. She stems from a generation of nurserymen and women who originally hailed from Gloucestershire. Her great grandfather founded Fullers Nursery on the London Road in Cheltenham.
If shyly reluctant to talk about herself, she relaxed when it came to sharing her unusual gardening philosophy!
Blood runs deep, and a love of plants plays a big part in Claire’s DNA. Her grandmother Margaret Rasell (née Fuller) attained a horticultural degree before working with her father. After World War II ended, she decided to make a fresh start by moving to Lincolnshire with her husband Donald. Mr Fuller helped to fund their investment in their chosen site, not far north of Stamford, part rural market garden, part overgrown pastures.
Unfortunately, unprecedented heavy snowfall in the winter of 1946/1947, caused existing greenhouses in the lower fields to collapse. Dereliction increased when the land flooded badly later in 1947.
Despite such inauspicious beginnings, Margaret enjoyed the challenge of what was essentially a blank canvas, and specialised in hardy plant production. She valiantly pressed on even when her husband’s health began to fail.
Family nursery
Their nursery was not open to the public. So after Donald sadly passed away in 1969, their son Tim left Stamford School at 16, determined to move the business forwards by taking plants to market twice a week at Stamford and Melton. Such endeavour built his reputation and led to loads of opportunities for contract work, underpinning the building of a large glasshouse, and eventually opening up for plant sales.
Marriage to Carol followed, and as the family grew, so did the nursery team. A self-taught, highly respected plantsman, Tim expanded into trees and shrubs. Always generous with advice for his customers, he took on garden design and giving talks to gardening clubs, as does his daughter.
As a child Claire was always around the nurseries, following her parents’ lead, helping by doing jobs. She loved art at school, especially when creating a picture: “I sponged it all up.” She chose to study for a four-year honours degree in Horticulture and Plantsmanship at The Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. After achieving an admirable 2:1, it wasn’t long before she returned home to get creative in any available border!
Scene-setting
When we met back in May, a stunning bi-colour curtain, pale and dark purple Wisteria floribunda f. multijuga ‘Debelser’ was draped over the tree nursery wall, a massed mist of racemes up to an incredible metre long.
Claire was particularly thrilled with another Wisteria floribunda, ‘Burford’ twining clockwise round, which envelops the wooden pergola and brick pillars along one of the main walkways.
Due to this year’s mild spring, myriad show-stopping trailing tresses dangled from gnarled boughs, with pale blue and darker violet pea-like flowers, utterly undamaged by frost – pure perfection – quite simply the best she ever remembered seeing it.
Whether the Edwardian pergola in the nearby Witham Hall School garden inspired Tim to build this extensive pergola or not, it was a masterful move. Today, it serves as the frame for the dappled pictures his daughter loves to paint with flowering bulbs, shrubs and climbers. Her theatrical scene-setting evolves constantly and successfully defines a harmonious magical and lush welcome whatever the season.
Glancing up at a nearby brick column, Claire was pleased to see that Clematis ‘HF Young’ was springing into action.
“I love the expectation. Its large open flowers, like mauve-blue stars, ageing to Wedgwood blue, with contrasting pale yellow stamens. Just you wait, when it flowers, everyone will want to buy one! Though these days it is hard to source.”
Claire never makes plans, preferring to go with the flow depending on the day. However, she is passionate about what happens especially with plant material supplied by wholesalers. She goes to extraordinary lengths to find the right plant for the right place, whether in full sun or shade, or partial mix, with a close eye kept on every plant’s welfare. Claire is happy to keep transplanting and moving her charges around until they show signs of flourishing. She explained, laughing: “Everything is planted with a suitcase!”
A feast for the eye
This time last year, I took my Florida-based family in search of gay summer-flowering perennials, knowing the Tea House chocolate Guinness cake would also prove popular.
My daughter and granddaughter both love colour, sunshine and animals in equal measure, just like Claire.
Just like Monty Don, everywhere this expert plantswoman goes, her three golden retrievers, Lacey, Erin and Dexter, are always in tow, always on the move together, including plants under her charge!
Claire did not disappoint. Armed with a spade and an artist’s eye for detail, she manages to contrive a new exhibition twice a year. Her feast for the eye in dappled shade displayed the latest series hydrangea asperas, standard fuchsias, and bright begonias in hanging baskets. Hot colours dazzled out in the hot borders: canna lilies, dahlias, salvias, zinnias and Alstroemeria ‘Indian Summer’.
We came away with joyous, hardy, and hard to resist, healthy specimens, including a new pet, rather like a bottlebrush: Sanguisorba hakusanensis ‘Lilac Squirrel’.
As Rasell’s Nurseries approaches its 80th anniversary, the aerial photo on their website indicates the scale of their success. True grit, with year-round commitment and 24/7 days a week hard work, brings rewarding results and benefits for the whole community and wildlife.
Congratulations to the whole family and all the team for winning the Rutland and Stamford Independent Garden Centre of the Year 2024-25.
Each success fuels further ambitions. For five years now, Claire has also been working on transforming another unused area of the site and creating yet more pictures.
Watch this space – Go visit!
Look out for a cheerful, free spirit who has happily found her true calling. As for studying wholesalers’ catalogues for exciting new introductions before making her order for next season’s plants “that will sing”, Claire chuckled at the thought. “I am usually too late! But I am bold and not worried about colours. Nature never gets it wrong! ”
Rasell’s Nurseries, Station Road, Little Bytham. Open Tuesday to Saturday 9.30am to 4.30pm. The Tea House, open Tue to Sat 11am-4pm. For more information visit www.rasells.co.uk
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Lincolnshire Life Magazine Newsletter 12/25 - mailchi.mp/lincolnshirelife.co.uk/lincolnshire-life-magazine-newsletter-12-25