Hill Farm Nursery

Who are you?

We are a family-run micro-nursery and market garden, operated by three people.

Barb hails from a long line of farmers and flower growers, and has been a life-long gardener and plant person. Her happiest place is at the seeding and transplant tables, and undertaking the perennial plant planning and propagation of the nursery side of our operation.

Jane is forging a new path for the farm, and has brought about a return to our roots as market gardeners with her deep interest in producing local food and working for small-scale agricultural sustainability. After time away studying horticulture, she has returned to the farm and has established a 1.5 acre garden in what was once a riverside hay field, and has longer term plans for a move to heritage vegetable and flower seed production. When she’s not in the vegetable patch, Jane undertakes ongoing nursery chores (all that transplanting, watering and weeding!) and is also the smiling face you will see at the Farmers’ Markets.

Edwin is chief of the structural aspects of the operation. He is the builder of greenhouses, digger of dirt, weeder extraordinaire, fixer and sometimes-inventor and creator of all things mechanical. He’s also a cheerful farmers’ market salesman when Barb and Jane are tucked away in the greenhouse madly potting up more plants or out in the garden planting, weeding and harvesting.

Where are you?

Just north of McLeese Lake, in the small settlement of Macalister, down beside the Fraser River.

What zone are you in?

The quick answer: Zone 4.

Most of our plants are targeted at Zone 1 to 4 growing conditions. Occasionally we like to experiment with Zone 5-ish things, and these are always well identified.

Where do you get your plants?

We grow them ourselves!

Okay, longer answer. The great majority of our plants are seed grown right here. We search the world over for interesting things suitable for our Cariboo-Chilcotin region, obtaining seed from various wildflower and alpine seed exchanges and specialty seed houses. Ethically-collected wild seeds are used, as are garden collected and commercial (non-treated) seeds.

Some of our plants are divisions from established plants in our personal nursery garden.

A very few of our plants are grown from wholesale-purchased bulb/bare root stock. We grow these on, plant some in our own garden, and pot up the extras for sale.

Can we come out to the nursery?

The answer at present is “No”, the reason chiefly being that we are generally much too busy growing and caring for the plants to host drop-in customers. We all love to chat, which means everything stops when a visitor drops in.

This said, we are still very much intending to one day open up an on-farm retail space, to be open during the spring and fall planting seasons. The spot is cleared, the plans are simmering… We would then have to step back on our Farmers’ Market attendance, so it’s a bit of a catch-22.

Are your plants organic?

Short answer: No. We are not at present certified organic.

Longer answer: We do not use any systemic insecticides (in particular the problematic neonicotinoid/”neonics”) so common in larger commercial operations. We do occasionally use organic pesticides such as diatomaceous earth to spot treat serious bug attacks on delicate plants, but in general we rely on good sanitation, strong plants, and the natural balance of insect pests and predators to keep things healthy. Our greenhouses and garden plots are absolutely alive with insect activity, as you will notice from the pictures on the website. We wouldn’t have it any other way. Oh, yes, and we also keep honeybees.

Being a micro-nursery, the plants we produce are not merely “widgets”; we take pride in knowing our plants on a very intimate level, from seed to sale. We live and work among them, they are our great joy, and we know that they can thrive without the dependence on pesticides so prevalent in larger-scale, more necessarily sterile plant nursery settings.

We do use commercial seed starting mixes and potting soils, some of which are OMRI certified, some of which contain small amounts of chemical fertilizer and wetting agents.

Our fertilization regimen is wide and varied: homemade compost and manure teas, commercial fish and seaweed fertilizers, commercial OMRI certified Biofert, and commercial micro-nutrient/mineral mixes are all used as needed. Our larger pot sizes often contain some farm-produced composted manure.

Oh, no! I found a bug on one of the plants I bought from you! What’s with that?

See above.

Yes, you’re going to find the odd insect. And also the odd weed seedling here and there. Pick the bug(s) off, pull the weeds out, and tell yourself that being poison free is worth it!