Unwins Seeds is a British

seed company Seed companies produce and sell seeds for flowers, fruits and vegetables to commercial growers and amateur gardeners. The production of seed is a multibillion-dollar business, which uses growing facilities and growing locations worldwide. While ...

based in Alconbury Weston,

Huntingdon Huntingdon is a market town in the Huntingdonshire district in Cambridgeshire, England. The town was given its town charter by King John in 1205. It was the county town of the historic county of Huntingdonshire. Oliver Cromwell was born there ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the ...

. ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' described Unwins as "a firm that has grown ... to become one of the most familiar features of Britain’s horticultural landscape",The Times
retrieved 4 September 2009 and the

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...

History

sweet pea The sweet pea, ''Lathyrus odoratus'', is a flowering plant in the genus ''Lathyrus'' in the family (biology), family Fabaceae (legumes), native plant, native to Sicily, southern Italy and the Aegean Islands. It is an annual plant, annual climbi ...

His son Charles, who had an interest in sweet peas, joined the business in 1914. A brother Frank had an interest in

gladioli ''Gladiolus'' (from Latin, the diminutive of ''gladius'', a sword) is a genus of perennial cormous flowering plants in the iris family (Iridaceae). It is sometimes called the 'sword lily', but is usually called by its generic name (plural ''g ...

. In the late 1950s the company sold packets of seeds to gardening shops in full colour packets. Later it would supply

garden centre A garden centre (Commonwealth English spelling; U.S. nursery or garden center) is a retail operation that sells plants and related products for the domestic garden as its primary business. It is a development from the concept of the retail plant n ...

s, which helped the business to blossom. In 2003, the firm celebrated its centenary by publishing ''The Unwins Century'', an illustrated volume by Colin Hambidge, and by launching the Unwins Centennial

Dahlia Dahlia (, ) is a genus of bushy, tuberous, herbaceous perennial plants native to Mexico and Central America. A member of the Asteraceae (former name: Compositae) family of dicotyledonous plants, its garden relatives thus include the sunflower, ...

. The company continues to be a leader in the development of types of sweet pea. Most of the sweet pea seeds are from countries outside of the UK, picked by hand.

Ownership

Unwins was based in

Histon Histon is a village and civil parish in the South Cambridgeshire district, in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is immediately north of Cambridge – and is separated from the city – by the A14 road which runs east–west. In ...

, just north of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

but is now situated on the eastern side of the

A1(M) A1(M) is the designation given to a series of four separate motorway sections in England. Each section is an upgrade to a section of the A1, a major north–south road which connects London, the capital of England, with Edinburgh, the capit ...

just north of the A14 Alconbury junction. The company was bought by Westland Horticulture of Dungannon,

County Tyrone County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. It is no longer used as an administrative division for local government but retai ...

in August 2004.

Product range

Market share

Unwins has the largest share of the UK amateur seed market.

References

{{reflist

External links

Marshalls Seeds
Companies based in Cambridgeshire Horticultural companies of the United Kingdom Seed companies 1903 establishments in England Agriculture companies established in 1903 British companies established in 1903