About Keepers Nursery

Keepers Nursery is a family business, established in the early 1980's, and now one of the best-known and respected fruit tree specialists in the UK.

What makes us special?

• Our huge range of over 600 different fruit tree varieties, old and modern, far exceeds that of any other nursery.

• 99% of the trees we supply are grafted by hand and grown by us here in our nursery in Kent.

• We also offer a custom-grafting service, giving customers access to thousands more rare and obscure varieties. We can even propagate new trees for you using buds taken from an existing tree in your garden.

• We are active in breeding new apple varieties from seed. We do this the old-fashioned way, taking pollen from one tree and fertilising the blossom on another. While most commericial apple breeding programmes are focussed on producing the next Braeburn or Gala, and need to consider factors such as consumer appearance or storage or handling characteristics, we concentrate on just one thing - flavour.

• Most tree nurseries dig up their trees in the autumn and store them. We are different - we leave the trees in the ground and only dig them up a few days before we send them to you. ensuring they are out of the ground for as little time as possible.

• Our nursery management system uniquely identifies each tree individually from "birth". This means we have complete traceability, which gives us a headstart over other nurseries in ensuring compliance with emerging phytosanitary and biosecurity standards set by Defra.

Fruit trees direct from a specialist grower

Thousands of amateur gardeners have planted trees supplied by us in their gardens and benefited from our help and advice. We particularly pride ourselves in our contribution to preserving many wonderful but endangered old fruit varieties. Our trees have been used for many restoration projects throughout the UK carried out by local authorities and organisations such as the National Trust and English Heritage.

Growing fruit trees is a long term investment. Like all long term investments it is important that you make the right start. This means planting good quality trees suitable for your requirements. Fruit tree production is a very specialised area of horticulture. There are now very few producers of fruit trees left in the UK. Most only cater for large orders, supplying trees to commercial growers or retailers. We are one of the few who supply trees direct to the public. We believe that as specialists we can supply the best quality trees and provide the best guidance and advice to our customers.

We supply bare-root trees which generally establish much better than container grown trees.

With a few exceptions all of our trees are grafted and produced on site at our nursery at East Farleigh in the Medway Valley in Kent. Our nursery undergoes regular phytosanitary inspections by Defra to ensure they are disease-free.

Most nurseries dig up their trees in the autumn and store them for sale over the winter. We are unusual in that we dig up individually per order, a short time before being delivered - which means that they will reach you fresh. If you intend to use our mail order service you may be concerned about the condition in which your trees will arrive. Rest assured your trees will be expertly packed to prevent damage and drying out. We fully guarantee the condition and quality of the trees that you receive. We will replace or refund any tree that is in any way damaged or fails to grow in the first spring after planting. In practice we rarely have to make such replacements.

Ordering from us

You can order trees online on this website. Our online ordering is easy to use and means that the trees are immediately reserved for you and that you are kept informed of the progress of the order by email. Please click for more information on online ordering. The information you see on this website regarding availability of trees is always up-to-date..

You can order trees any time during the year. However, the trees will be supplied at a time convenient for you between mid-November and mid-March, which is the correct time for transplanting bare-root trees. The large range we have means that we can only produce a relatively small number of any one type. Inevitably we start to run out of some varieties as the season progresses. The earlier you order the better the chances that we have the trees that you want.

You can either collect trees from our nursery or have them delivered. Please note that even if you wish to collect your trees you still need to order first and arrange a time to collect.

Custom grafting service

In addition to our normal range of trees we are able to propagate almost any other variety to order. This includes the possibility of propagating from a special tree in your garden as well as unusual varieties from collections such as those at National Fruit Collection at Brogdale or the RHS Gardens at Wisley. Please click here for details of our fruit tree grafting service.

Press articles about Keepers Nursery

We are regularly recommended as a supplier by journalists writing in the national press as well as gardening magazines. The following are feature articles written about  Keepers Nursery in major gardening magazines.

Finding Keepers - Roy Lancaster writes about Keepers Nursery in The Garden September 2003 the journal of the Royal Horticultural Society

A Fruitful Business - Feature article written by Duncan Hayes with photos by Andrea Jones in BBC Gardens Illustrated magazine September 2005

Business details

Keepers Nursery Limited: Gallants Court, Gallants Lane, East Farleigh, Maidstone, Kent ME15 0LE