The leafy little German town of Borken-Marbeck, near to the Dutch border, is in an area primarily known for its ubiquitous cornfields, but nestled in between them, Stade Staudenkulturen is a little gardeners’ paradise. Here, Helmut and his staff propagate and grow approximately 3,000 varieties of perennial and other plants.

Helmut Stade took over his father Wolfgang’s business in 1980, by which time it had already been operating for 30 years. The family tradition is set to continue, with Helmut’s son, André, already responsible for marketing and on-line sales. Family is also represented in other ways, with the nursery’s introductions Tricyrtis hirta ‘Silke’ and Sempervivum ‘André’ being named for his daughter and son respectively.

Both trade and private customers are welcome to visit the nursery and buy direct, but the past few years have also seen a steady increase in business via mail order and the internet.

It is the landscaping trade, however, that gives Stade most of their business, and one of their primary ways of marketing themselves is by participation in spectacular regional and national plant exhibitions. These are held every two years, always as a new location, where whole areas are planted up to show off the plants in a real landscape setting. Stade have delivered as many as 250,000 plants to one of these exhibitions – that’s a significant amount by anyone’s standards, but when you know that the annual production at Stade is 500,000 plants you can realise the importance of these exhibitions for them. And Stade have been well rewarded for their efforts over the years with a substantial collection of medals and awards for their displays.

The next exhibition is scheduled for 2005 and will take place in Munich. It is called the BUGA (Bundesgartenschau) and will be set around a 12 hectare lake with a man made beach. Together with some other well known growers, Stade will deliver a total of 120.000 water plants for this lake.

The red arrow points to the location of the Stade nursery, where Ligularia 'Little Lantern' was discovered.