Nick Macer
Specialist nurseryman and owner of Pan Global Plants
Nick Macer is a self-taught botanist, plant collector, TV presenter and owner of Pan Global Plants, a nursery based in Stroud, Gloucestershire which offers an extraordinarily wide selection of unusual plants.
Nick’s Tigger-like enthusiasm for the unusual means that any visit to Pan Global Plants is fun and informative, and always results in a car boot full of rare and exotic beauties!
Your three favourite flowers?
Not flowers as such, and changes weekly, but let’s just grab a few gems: Arbutus x thuretiana, Daphne bholua ‘Tashi’ and Agave ovatifolia.
Tell us about your childhood garden?
I was given a small area for myself and decided to make a weed garden, much to my father’s disdain. That probably says something about me doesn’t it?
Who or what inspired your career choice?
Difficult one this. I just fell into an obsession with trees at 21 and I’m not sure what triggered it. From then on my life path, in a general sense, was set in stone.
What is a typical day in the life of Nick?
Black coffee, check all the delicate things at home, like new hybrid crosses I’ve made, water pots, then into work. Check the current state of play with staff, then phone calls, emails and assisting customers. Take photos of current things in flower. Pollinate this, pollinate that, or collect seed.
Time in the nursery garden with volunteers. Depending on time of year home by 6.30 or 11pm.
No garden is complete without …
A whole load of good things from Pan Global’ 😊
Something we’d find:
On your bedside table: A stack of unread books
In your flower arrangement: Something oddball to keep things interesting
In your garden shed: Gripper, the hybrid experiment that went so, so wrong. Do not enter.
The flaw you wish you didn’t have?
Too quick to dismiss
What would you be in another life?
A woman. Would be interesting, no?
Guiding principles?
Keep smiling 😊
Who is a horticultural hero?
Don’t have one, but anyone with real talent and especially real passion gets my vote.
What is the one flower or plant you’d never plant in your garden, but don’t detest when you see others plant it?
There are so many!
If there was a fire, and you could only keep one horticultural book, what would it be?
WJ Bean, Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles, although to be honest it’s all online now at treesandshrubsonline.org
For posterity, what would you like your work to be known for?
Excellence and inspiration
Contact: Pan Global Plants, on info@panglobalplants.com and 01452 741 641
Quick fire: some favourite things
Book: The most influential at least was ‘The Power of Now’
Film: So many good ones! Parasite, Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), etc etc
Painting: My Richard Ballenger
Smell: My girlfriend’s skin
Meal: Vietnamese
Travel Destination: Mexico, every time!
A cause near and dear to me: The ‘Keep Gripper Hidden’ fund
Place to go for inspiration: Westonbirt arboretum
A great walk near where you live: The Cotswold Way
Thing to collect obsessively: Trees
Favourite person to follow on Instagram: James Hitchmough
Garden in the UK: Tregrehan
Garden anywhere else: Las Pozas, Mexico, though have actually never been!
Images of Nick & Pan Global garden: GAP/Charles Hawes
