How much space is needed to start a plant nursery?

Many people may have have enough room in your own home garden, but might not realise.

Commercial horticulture offers more opportunities than most people realise. Often you don't need all that much to find work - just awareness of the opportunities, a good attitude, and a few key skills. A 20 hour course in the right skills may have more chance of kicking off a career, than a full blown diploma or degree that misses those key skills.

If you look close enough, you can see plant leaves can vary a great deal between different types of plants.

The size and shape can vary, as can the colour; but also the texture, the arrangement of veins and whether parts of the leaf is curled down, up, flat or something else. Leaf characteristics can also be affected by disease or environmental condition, so if you use leaves to identify a plant, it is important you use normal, healthy leaves.

Our Plant Taxonomy short course (launched June/July 2018) teaches you about every aspect of scientific plant identification. You learn to observe leaves more closely, and what to look out for in the leaf variations. You also learn to observe fruits, flowers and other parts of a plant; and how these various characteristics can be identifies and used to determine exactly what plant you are looking at.

Taking photos of plants, then naming and cataloging those photos is a very effective way of learning to identify a lot more plants.

Herbal medicines have real effects, but they are complicated. The main active ingredients of lavender for instance are linalool, linalyl acetate, linalyl butyrate, volatile oil, cineol, pinene, limonene, camphor, geraniol, borneol and tannin.

Each of these chemicals can do different things to the body though; and the % of each chemical varies between cultivars. Some cultivars of Lavendula angustifolia will contain very little camphor (which can be toxic if ingested in quantity), but many other lavender species are high in camphor.

Using herbs whether medicinally, in cooking or cosmetics can be a very positive thing; but it should be done with a proper understanding of the herb.

You can learn to understand and use herbs more safely and effectively by studying our 20 hour short course - great professional development for anyone working with food, medicine, cosmetics or in horticulture. An essential education for you own daily living. click here