The Picton family’s Old Court Nurseries in the Malverns, is the stuff of horticultural legend. The nursery was established by the world-famous aster breeder Ernest Ballard in 1906. Percy Picton, who I suspect loved alpines rather more than asters, was Ernest’s nursery manager before Percy acquired the nursery himself in the 1950s. When asters began to fall from favour in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Percy started to propagate alpines, heathers and unusual shrubs and trees.
In 1959, Percy’s son Paul joined the business. Paul, along with his wife, Meriel, would go on to conserve hundreds of asters for posterity. The couple established a Plant Heritage National Collection that contains almost 400 aster cultivars, species and taxa to this day. Paul, who’s just celebrated his
