Do I have a potential 35m giant in a pot?

Hi @Greenish and welcome to GC

It certainly looks like a sycamore to me - it will be happy enough in a pot for a wee while, but I imagine (I am no expert) that it will be wanting to send a tap root down at some point before too long, so its lifespan in a pot would be limited. I would be surprised if a garden centre would take it off you - there would likely be implications for them in proving provenance and being able to demonstrate that it is disease free etc; that, and of course, sycamores are ten a penny as they self seed like mad (as I suspect you have found).

Do you know anyone with some land that might want a tree (well away from buildings and infrastructure of course)?

 

They are quite hardy - deciduous, but hardy. If you got a really big (and I mean big with a capital 'F' ) you could probably get a nice wee tree out of it for a few years.

 

You could Bonsai it

Garden centres can't/won't take it . It's all about plant growers licences.

A licence for plant breeders rights (not what you've done) propagation of lots of plants without a licence for sale is illegal. So most small nurseries buy in plugs and seedlings from nurseries that hold the licence and then pay a royalty for these plants. Garden centres usually only buy from their regular suppliers who already have the licence or who buy from people with the licence.

Things are tough nowadays with regard to regulation. We used to grow for some of our local centres but that stopped years ago.

 

Agreed.

You can sell any other plants you like - as we did last weekend when we sold well over 1,000 plants.

Garden centres have a different problem and that is plant hygiene. Nowadays they, generally, won't buy from any supplier (even a private person) unless they have evidence of good plant hygiene. So private gardens are usually excluded.

We used to provide plants to local garden centres but had to stop because compliance was too onerous. Some of our regular garden centres would send people to us if they didn't have what was required and knew that we did.

The guidance to garden centres and nurseries is as follows:-

• Source plants from suppliers with a good record of supplying disease-free stock.
• Check whether your supplier belongs to an official accreditation scheme.
• Nurseries - if possible, propagate from your own stock plants.
Plants on arrival need careful inspection.


Remember to:

• Check for compliance with purchase order and any plant passport or phytosanitary certificate required.
• Keep accurate records of all bought-in material.
• Only accept delivery if you are sure that the plants are healthy.
• If there are any problems, inform your supplier immediately.


Quarantine areas should be isolated from production and retail areas.
What more can you do?
• Restrict access to the area.
• Be scrupulous about hygiene.
• Use dedicated tools.

• Hold new arrivals for an appropriate period and monitor frequently.

 

We used to sell a lot of Silybum marianum that were always self-seeding themselves all over our veggie garden. Apparently people liked them for their leaves . They are pest and disease free - naturally - so were never a problem to sell into the garden centres. We just stuck them into fresh compost in pots, free from local nursery, and sold them to the GC for £1 each with everything going to charity. We were able to sell them by the hundred! Until the new guidelines came in.

 

You split the words incorrectly

We always split them differently and pronounce them the way we split them

Silly Bum Mari Anum :rasp: