Bunyards Nursery
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Bunyards Nursery (also known as Bunyard & Co., or Bunyard's Royal Nursery) was a nursery founded in 1796 at Allington, near Maidstone. It specialised in fruit and roses.
Bunyard's Nursery was established on 16 September 1796 near Maidstone, established by James Bunyard.[1][2]
Before the arrival of the railways, business was local and developed gradually. From the 1860s, the nursery acquired land in Allington where orchards were planted. It was nearly bankrupted in 1879 but George Bunyard was able to win a contract to supply half a million trees to Sudeley Castle and the business recovered and continued to expand through the late 1800s.[2][3]
The nursery became the Royal Nursery by appointment to Queen Victoria and grew fruit trees across over 300 acres and within 66 glasshouses.[4]
In the late 1950s, Bunyards and Laxton Brothers amalgamated and ran as Bunyards and Laxtons Nurseries, operating from Brampton Nurseries in Huntingdon.[5]