Making a bee-line for Sudbury

Sudbury Town Council announces continued partnership with The Garden Nursery to keep Sudbury's blooms at their best and sustainability at the forefront.

Following an open Tender process for Sudbury Town Council’s 2026 – 2029 Floral Display & Maintenance contract, The Council are pleased to announce the contract has been (re-)awarded to local family run horticulturalists The Garden Nursey at Constitution Hill.

The Nursery team were awarded the 2023 – 2026 contract at a time when Sudbury Town Council were moving to a more sustainable way of planting, and The Garden Nursery really rose to the challenge. The Council looks forward to building on this success over the next few years.

The Mayor of Sudbury, Councillor Adrian Stohr comments;

“It is a joy for the Council to work in such close partnership with a hyper local, much-loved business to achieve such visible and meaningful outcomes for the town of Sudbury. Every day the Council receives wonderful compliments about the floral displays and that is down to the hard work and partnership working of The Garden Nursery and Sudbury Town Council’s teams with sustainability at the forefront. The results are clear to see and are for everyone to enjoy, from residents, visitors and all the bees and butterflies passing through!”

The more formal town centre planters are complemented by drought tolerant, pollinator friendly beds around town, as well as the Council's seasonal 'no mow meadow' at The Croft that is a magnet for wildlife.

The Council’s Business Manager, Rachel Price, who manages the partnership, adds:

“Over 3 years ago, in recognition of our changing climate and the East being the driest region in the UK; Sudbury Town Council resolved to remove heavily water reliant annual bedding planting from our floral schemes, replacing traditional bedding plants with drought tolerant, pollinator-friendly perennial planting. Together with a newly adopted biodiversity policy the town centre and bedding schemes have been beautifully re-designed by The Garden Nursery to promote these principles whilst keeping the town looking its very best.

In this period of drought these schemes, now established, haven’t been watered in 2 years, are alive with pollinators and in the long run are saving taxpayers money while boosting biodiversity.

"Sudbury is also on a ‘*B-Line’ which is a vital pollinator pathway so it’s essential our planting is carefully selected to help the pollinators on their journeys.

One of the many highlights of the partnership is the way the Garden Nursery team work so well with Sudbury Town Council to promote a reduce-reuse-recycle ethos, with The Garden Nursery making excellent use of wood chippings and leaf mulch from our grounds maintenance operations and re-using it in their schemes, any removed planting is composted down and re-employed and The Garden Nursery even reuse cardboard, plastic and wooden crates from our Market for their customers.”

Rob Jackson, Owner of The Garden Nursery goes on to say:

“We are absolutely delighted to be working with Sudbury Town Council, Rachel and the excellent wardens for another three years. We have built a fantastic working relationship with the council from trusting us to provide a beautiful seasonal display within the town to creating lasting perennial, pollinator-friendly beds on the roundabouts and around the town. It has been a real pleasure to grow into this role as a small local business, and we are very excited about the next three years”.

*What are B-Lines?

B-Lines are an imaginative and beautiful solution to the problem of the loss of flowers and pollinators. The B-Lines are a series of ‘insect pathways’ running through our countryside and towns, along which we are restoring and creating a series of wildflower-rich habitat stepping stones. They link existing wildlife areas together, creating a network, like a railway, that will weave across the UK landscape. This will provide large areas of brand new habitat benefiting bees and butterflies– but also a host of other wildlife.

Read more at: buglife.org.uk/our-work/b-lines/

The B-Line map of the UK showing Sudbury on a 'pollinator pathway'.