Nursery Manager - Karim Habibi

My name is Karim Habibi and I am the Nursery Manager here at Keepers Nursery. I live on site with my wife and our four young children. In fact I have lived my whole life here, with the fruit tree nursery on my doorstep, since it was my parents Hamid and Sima who established Keepers Nursery in East Farleigh, Kent, in 1993.

Growing up I loved trees and as a teenager I spent many summers earning pocket money helping my parents in the Nursery. I became a partner of the business in the summer of 2010 after completing an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at Wadham College, Oxford. I also have a Level 3 RHS qualification from Hadlow College.

After a decade working under the expert guidance of my parents I took over the day-to-day running of the Nursery in 2019. My parents had built up the reputation of Keepers Nursery in the 1990s as one of the pioneers in offering the British public the opportunity to buy rare varieties of fruit trees, at a time when many of our old orchards and local varieties were being lost and forgotten. This is an approach I have enthusiastically continued - each season I plant and test historic and unusual varieties which are not available to the public anywhere else, to increase the range the Nursery can offer to our enthusiastic customer base.

Of course I also wanted to put my own stamp on the Nursery, and meet the needs of a new generation of customers, and the new challenges facing small businesses in the 2020s. I have already made some significant improvements to the production processes in the Nursery, and we now solely produces one-year-old trees, including trained trees. This has allowed us to increase the range of different varieties on offer, while using fewer materials and packaging. The Internet was becoming increasingly important when my parents started the Nursery, but customers today expect much more, and I’m active in adding social media content and our new YouTube channel – where you can see me in action in the Nursery!

My most exciting innovation started in 2014, when I decided to dip my toes into the world of apple breeding. I had long wondered how the old traditional varieties had come into existence, and out of curiosity and with youthful enthusiasm I planted 150 seeds to see what would happen. My father, well aware of the very slim chances of producing the next Braeburn or Granny Smith nevertheless left me alone to experiment. The first of my seedling apples arrived in 2019 and the results were far better than I could ever have imagined. Unlike commercial developers who have to put so much emphasis on the marketing and supply chain aspects of new varieties, I am able to focus solely on the characteristics that I know are most valued by British gardeners – flavour and ease of growing. As a result Keepers Nursery now offers customers a unique range of exclusive new apple varieties.

In 2023 I was invited to join the RHS Fruit, Vegetable and Herb Committee and I now have an active part behind the scenes in the future of garden fruit grown in Britain. This role also requires me to have a public presence and I am very keen to teach anyone I meet about fruit trees.

Outside of Nursery life I keep myself busy looking after my children with my lovely wife by my side. Much like my late father, Hamid, I enjoy cooking and am a keen photographer. I have also played football and cricket for West Farleigh Sports Club since 2013.

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time is today.”

Old Chinese proverb