A couple running one Kent’s last remaining market gardens supplying fresh produce direct to restaurants and homes fear the land could be sold for redevelopment. Paul and Michelle Vesey-Wells have worked at Walmestone Growers at Preston, near Canterbury, for nine years but now the owners of the eight-acre site want to sell it.
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00:00 Wormwood Stone has been a nursery since the 1950s, in one way or another. It started out like in the 1950s and it's been a market garden in its current form since the 80s.
00:09 We really think there's a demand for this sort of nursery. There's none left really now, like us, especially not in East Kent, and we really would like to preserve it.
00:19 If we can't buy this place, then ultimately it's unlikely. I think someone... it's very tricky to make a working business out of this.
00:27 I've done it 20 years, so I'm kind of confident in what I'm doing, but someone coming into it might struggle.
00:32 And ultimately I think the only people with the sort of capital to buy this would be some sort of property investor. It could easily be lost forever.