Cuttings not cakes: The sublime story of the Secret Orchard Nursery

You'd be forgiven for associating the Derbyshire Dales with purple heather, a stalwart flower for this most romantic, beloved, yet hardy part of the British Isles. When I was a child, however, it was in Derbyshire that I used to marvel at tropical passionflowers, cannas and spiked lobelias, all thanks to the green fingers of plantswoman Julie Soghomonian.

I remember her stand of plants, quite casually, but commandingly, arranged like a floral sweet shop. Rich, firework colours jostled together on a little cart parked outside the campsite check-in desk at Birchwood Farm near Matlock, where my family used to stay each summer on our holidays from nearby Nottingham.

The farm, a seven-mile walk from Matlock, was run by her late parents, Nora and Frank Smith. I have memories of the dirt track that ran between the fields of campers where Julie lived on one side in a bungalow with her children, Emily and Jordan, with her polytunnel on the other side. Around its doorways were stacked piles of variously sized pots and it was surrounded by a simple fence beefed up with nettles, where you would occasionally spot a laced Wyandotte hen mischievously pecking about.

Throughout this little homemade nursery, Julie’s talent and taste for largely glamorous perennials could be seen growing at large. It was a passion she discovered as a child — both sets of grandparents had cottage gardens brimming with flowers, vegetables and soft fruit. It would be her mother’s successionally planted flower-beds, however, that were most inspiring. These brimmed with perennials chosen to provide a never-ending succession of colour throughout the growing season. As Julie started propagating plants herself she showed the same skill, now developed with her own style and flair.

At first, she sold her plants to campers, but she also attended many local country fairs and markets, most regularly the Tansley car boot sale. This was quite the early-morning task for a mother with two small children. The car piled with plants, off they would go. Emily remembers how she and her brother would cradle the hanging baskets as their mum drove them off for a day of selling her precious propagated cargo.

Today, Julie is to be found growing plants on a larger, but still very personal scale just down the road from Birchwood Farm in the town of Wirksworth, on a patch of land that she inherited from her mother.

Entering the busy Georgian walled garden, home to Secret Orchard Nursery, is like stepping into a Rousseau painting. The nursery cat, Harper, slinks through the brimming carnival of flowers — penstemons, scabious, dahlias and rudbeckias of both the annual ‘Sahara’ and the towering, often short-lived perennial that is ‘Prairie Glow’. Everything has been grown and propagated from seeds and cuttings. Potting away in her greenhouse with the radio on is her kind of heaven: ‘The stress just lifts off you and the satisfaction of seeing everything potted and growing away is golden.’ She is often out at midnight, torch in hand, looking for slugs.

Emily now works at the nursery, too, where she is particularly helpful with social media. ‘When she was three, she was a potting wizard, then she stopped and didn’t start gardening again until she turned 20.’

Walking through the nursery, I am reminded of Julie’s beautiful handwriting, which can be seen on her plant labels with wondrous, chocolate selection-box-like descriptions as the air — particularly above the echinacea and eryngium — buzzes with both wild and honey bees feasting on the early-autumn nectar and pollen.

Back in 2014, however, when the nursery arrived, the land within the four walls was a Sleeping Beauty forest of brambles hiding old tarmac that required hard work to erase. Today, the battle has been won and paths have been laid of old brick and sandstone — easily found in this limestone valley. Indeed, the foreground of colourful plants contrasts magically with the magnificent hillsides dotted with sycamores. The main hill is known locally as the Gilkin and Wirksworth itself is known as ‘the gem of the Peak’.

Space has been carved out for two constantly full greenhouses, painstakingly built by Julie, pane by pane. There is also a plant-sale area. In summer, punnets of damsons — the nursery contains mature fruit trees, some of which were planted back in the 1960s — are especially sought after.

The plants have gained a reputation for their superior quality and range. In an age of online buying, many gardeners are now seeking out local nurseries such as this and realising the benefits of buying from the grower as they used to. However much time they save, a mobile-phone screen can never capture the atmosphere of such places.

Best of all — and a testament to Julie’s efforts in taking cuttings — is that the nursery has not had to diversify away from plants and become more of a tea room, as have so many commercial garden centres. Come October, the walled garden’s door will shut for the winter, when she will be heading to sell her homegrown, handmade wreaths of hydrangeas and berries at the Wirksworth Christmas market.

This feature originally appeared in the August 12, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.