Your Heritage
Cheshire Gardens Trust (CGT) was formed in 2004. The trust engages in activities such as researching historic gardens and parks, and organising educational talks.
Caldwell's Plant Nurseries were established in Knutsford in the 1780s and traded for over 200 years. They closed in 1992 and many customers and staff still have memories of the nurseries, their plants and practices. The nurseries supplied plants countrywide and abroad, to households, local authorities and hospitals.
The ledgers and day books contain extraordinary detail, providing information on price trends, changes in fashion for plants, workers' wages and transportation methods. There are no records of plant nurseries in north west England before 1750 and no comparable sources with such detail from an 18th or 19th-century nursery in the region.
In 2013 the CGT began a project to delve into the nurseries’ history and the six generations of the Caldwell family who ran them. The project aimed to share the documentary, oral and horticultural heritage of the nurseries.
The heritage was shared with a wide audience through the development of the Caldwell's Nurseries website, an exhibition and displays, and by training volunteers to give tours and publishing a book.