Philip Baulk retires from Ashwood Nurseries

Philip Baulk has retired from Ashwood Nurseries after 39 years of service. During this time, Philip has worked for the most part as a plant breeder and, more recently, as business manager. Philip came from a nursery background (both his father and grandfather were nurserymen in Kidderminster) so growing was in his blood. During his career at Ashwood, he has worked closely with nursery owner John Massey to develop certain genera into specialist crops, for which Ashwood has become nationally and internationally known.

While John focused on hepaticas and Kevin Belcher concentrated on hellebores, Philip took charge of Cyclamen, Lewisias, Primula auricula and Anemone pavonina.  Through careful selection and hand pollination, the results of the breeding programme were remarkable, producing some outstanding new plant introductions and seed strains that have never been bettered. Lewisia ‘Ashwood Pearl’, Lewisia  ‘Ashwood Ruby, Lewisia cotyledon Ashwood  Strain together with the unique Lewisia ‘Ashwood Carousel Hybrids’ are arguably the most notable of these. Philip was also responsible for developing hydrangeas as a major crop with a superb range of species and cultivars being acquired and propagated.

Additionally, he and John have featured most of these specialist plant groups in single genus exhibits at the RHS London Flowers Shows, including Chelsea, and our record of 50 RHS Gold Medals speaks for itself: for this to be achieved with such a diverse range of single genus exhibits is rare in the show bench world. It certainly did much to enhance Ashwood’s reputation. Many other awards were bestowed including 5 Farrer Trophies, 2 William’s Memorial Medals and the coveted Lawrence Medal. In 2007, Philip was presented with The Kath Dryden Award by the Alpine Garden Society in recognition of his work with the Genus Lewisia.

More recently, Philip has taken a step back from plant breeding and developed his role as business manager, over-seeing many new projects while Ashwood Nurseries continued to grow from a small plant nursery to the thriving garden centre, garden, gift shop and tea room that it is today. At Ashwood’s heart, however, there still lies an abiding love of plants, driven by John’s passions and built on a solid foundation of brilliant horticultural practice laid down by Philip. Thank you, Philip for all those many skills and attributes that you have brought to Ashwood. May we wish you and Norma good health and happiness in your retirement. We shall miss you.