We've spent 40 years learning about bulbs – so you don't have to!

One of our key strengths that we are very proud of is our huge amount of knowledge and experience.

Gary Huggins, our Managing Director, has spent over 40 years working in the flower bulbs industry.

In fact, Gary is so well known for his knowledge and expertise that we often have people from across the industry calling us to tap in to and take advantage of his huge knowledge bank and to ask him for advice on what to do. So how does Gary know so much, and how is this of benefit to our customers?

Well, Gary has a lifetime of experience of flower bulbs, having entered into the flower bulb industry at the age of just 16. He started his career working for a seed company called Johnsons, which has since gone into liquidation, and whilst there he worked his way up from dealing with the customer services section to handling marketing and product development.

Gary then spent the next 20 years not just working with and purchasing bulbs, but actually visiting all the trials and seeing the product in situ. As a result of this he was consequently able to assess and determine whether products were growing true to type and if they were of a quality that was of a high enough standard for him to want to offer them to his clients.

This isn't just historical; this is still something that Gary regularly undertakes. He still goes out to the sites and sees the product, and judges whether or not they are of a high enough quality for him to sell to his customers. The process is not just a formality. Gary will regularly reject products if they are not up to his high standards.

For example, Gary recently went out to see a field trial of bluebells. He rejected it outright, and the reason was despite what the growers were claiming, Gary could tell straight away that what they were offering wasn't a true English bluebell.

The grower in question had a woodland area and purported to have purchased the bluebells from a company and to have developed them over a large number of years. However, Gary could tell just from looking at them that they were either predominantly Spanish, or were a hybrid between English and Spanish bluebells.

So what, you may ask. What does it matter? Surely a bluebell is a bluebell. This is a common misconception, and the truth is that this is not the case. A true English bluebell is a very distinct type of bluebell, which sadly is being wiped out by the very invasive Spanish species. Its spores can by transported by the wind, insects, bees etc. and if they cross pollinate with English bluebells then the entire stock can be ruined.

In order to avoid this, our stock comes from an area that has a three mile exclusion zone around it. The suppliers regularly go and search the exclusion zone for anything being grown in that area, and carry out spot checks in people's gardens. If anyone is growing a product that isn't true to type then they dig it up and replace it with a stock of their own bulbs. This shows the steps that we take to ensure that when we say we are selling true English bluebells that that is exactly what you are getting.

This is just one example of the steps we take to ensure you receive the product that we say you will receive, and that you only receive the highest quality product. We are very proud to offer only the highest quality products, and it is our years of knowledge working in the industry that allows us to make sure that that is what our customers get.

Boston Bulbs Wholesale is a privately owned business with over 35 years experience of importing only the finest quality horticultural products throughout Europe and from farmers and growers all over the UK. For help and advice, just give us a call on 01775 769 333 or visit /.