Something Special
When Derry Watkins speaks of her nursery, Special Plants in south-west England, it brings to mind the proverb, ‘If you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life’. In Derry’s case, this is just as well, since running a nursery is not for the faint hearted: early starts, late nights, backbreaking lifting and wrangling wheelbarrows are all part and parcel of this particular day job.
A passionate gardener and self-confessed plantaholic, Derry got the bug for selling her surplus home-grown plants at weekly Women’s Institute markets, where she met fellow enthusiasts and revelled in the experience. However, it wasn’t until she’d met Alice Doyle, owner of Log House Plants in Oregon, in the early 1990s, that she decided to take
