Barnhaven’s hallmark is a triad of color, lilting grace, with overtones of fragrance. Florence Bellis, Gardening and Beyond 1986

Barnhaven has been breeding and selecting plants since the 1930s through four different owners. It all started with a few packets of primrose seeds bought almost by chance by a lady with a vision in Oregon in the United States. Thirty years later an established company crossed the Atlantic to the Lake District in England and then the English Channel where it settled in a small village in Brittany, France. It is a singular story whose common thread is one of a passion for primroses passed on through the various owners who have caught the bug after being introduced to this amazing family of flowers.

Each of the owners has of course had their own vision and interests, but with over 400 species and thousands of varieties there is something for everyone. Yet what each subsequent owner has endeavoured to do is to continue Florence Bellis’s dream of pure colour and perfect form. Each of them has taken up the challenge with plenty of enthusiasm and patience and has believed in the importance of staying true to the first new lines produced by the company’s founder while at the same time introducing exciting new strains and colours.

Florence Hurtig was born in New Orleans in 1906 but later moved with her family to Oregon where her mother kept a market garden. She trained as a pianist, but the Depression of 1929 prevented her from following that career and she ended up stuck without work or money and her health deteriorating. She then decided to move with her husband Lou Levy to a leaky old barn belonging to a wealthy acquaintance. Here she describes the first time she saw it: “It was nothing to look at with its ochre-coloured paint faded into the wood, but circumstances made it the most beautiful thing in the world. It was a haven and when I crossed the creek and stepped into the lane leading to it, I had a strange feeling of destiny.” It was to become the setting for Barnhaven gardens.

As the story goes, Florence decided to spend her last $5 on a few packets of Sutton’s seeds she had seen sometime earlier in the English catalogue of a friend. She had no previous knowledge about growing primroses but with luck on her side she sowed the following spring and germination was excellent. She planted out the seedlings under the alders along the creek at the back of the barn. A year later over a thousand plants bloomed – the whites and yellows of the Munstead strain and the reds of Suttons ‘Brilliance and Crimson King’. Word got round about her garden, visitors began to arrive and she started to grow plants for sale. She also started sending out hand painted mailing lists. The lyrical style of the first catalogue (she even forgot to put prices in) was to become a trademark for Barnhaven. Her interest in primroses growing, she researched the subject at Oregon State University and published a resulting series of articles in the Oregon Journal. This led to the founding of the American Primrose Society in 1941, and she became Editor of the Society Journal for the following 9 years. (Barnhaven still has very strong links with the American Primrose Society).

Simultaneously she developed her plant propagation and sales business as Barnhaven. Florence hand pollinated her flowers by emasculating her plants - a method not often used on a commercial scale before but which meant she did not have to use brushes or sterilize. Her method is still used in exactly the same way today.

In the first batch of seedlings from Suttons seeds appeared a ‘Chinese red Polyanthus’ with a small gold star centre and an almost black stem. It was named ‘Kwan Yin’ as its elegance of form and grace suggested ‘China’s goddess of mercy’. Its pollen was used to produce several of the strains of Polyanthus. With rigorous selection and hand pollination she created many other strains such as her ‘Marine blues’. These strains became known as the silver dollar Primroses because the size of each flower equalled or exceeded that of the then dollar coin. The only other outside blood used was from Linda Eichman pink polyanthus which were bred over ten years into the ‘New Pinks’ strain and from the famous Cowichan strain offered for the first time as plants and seeds in 1949. These originated in the small community in Cowichan station near Victoria. Florence managed to obtain some pollen and introduced a range of hardy Cowichans. She also did a lot of work on anomalous primroses, juliea hybrids, gold-laced polyanthus and the double forms.

Florence’s first marriage ended in divorce in the mid-50s but she met Bob Bellis and married him in 1959. When Bob died in 1966 she was devastated and decided she could no longer run the nursery and sent her stock of seeds to Jared and Sylvia Sinclair in Brigsteer. When Florence decided to withdraw from the business the fame of Barnhaven was world-wide but Florence had made very little money from running the nursery so she continued working in a small health-food store for as long as she was able. She also wrote a book called ‘Gardening and Beyond’ which was published by Timber Press in 1986. She died peacefully in her sleep in 1987.

Florence Bellis sent her seed stock to the Sinclairs in 1966 with a simple message of 'Yours – to keep or kill'. She would have destroyed the stock rather than allow the commercial seed companies to have them. She wanted to return the stock to England, where they had originated and chose the Sinclairs to carry on the work.

For the Sinclairs, former customers, this was an unexpected turn of events. They had previously mainly grown cut flowers for the local floristry market, but Sylvia had a horticultural degree, and both she and Jared fell to the task with enthusiasm. Working from their nursery in Brigsteer in the northwest of England, the Sinclairs made hurried changes such as erecting a pollinating shed and planting more trees for shade. They carried on the tradition of pollinating carefully selected open-ground plants, lifted and planted in pollinating sheds open on all sides to the elements. When the pollinating season was over the plants were put back in the open ground to ripen the seed pods for July harvesting. This process however became too time-consuming and they started keeping pots on benches for the whole of the season.

Gradually they built a reputation for quality in gardening circles. As well as maintaining Florence Bellis's original lines, they introduced many of their own new strains. These included Ramona, Rustic Reds, Mexico, Reverie, Flamingo, Paris 90, Midnight, Daybreak, Limelight, Fuchsia Victorians, Harbour Lights, Valentine Victorians, Yellow Cowichans, and Casquet. They worked extensively on the double auriculas, and practically restarted the single auriculas and the julianas from scratch. Their greatest achievement was the new strain of Primula sieboldii which remained Jared's favourite.

Their catalogues were loved and enjoyed by all, notably because of Jared’s very colourful prose. See this extract of the Barnhaven catalogue describing Primula sieboldii.

They announced their retirement in 1990 to the dismay of their wide circle of gardening friends, customers and admirers. Sadly, Sylvia died in 1996 and Jared in July 1998.

Angela's parents moved to Brigsteer, and as a result of her own gardening hobby, her interest in old fashioned flowers and their location, she came to know the Sinclairs. Over a period, they introduced her to the intricacies of Primula and Polyanthus breeding, and when they decided to retire, they passed the business to her. Angela, at the time a professional librarian, and her husband Keith, a translator spent some time looking for a suitable location in England to carry on the business, but eventually after a holiday in France they found the location which most suited them near the village of Plouzélambre in Brittany. The house was a typical farmhouse four miles from the sea with sufficient land and a source of water to start a horticultural business. They moved there in January 1990 and the first seeds were sown in March 1990.

Angela successfully continued to produce Primula seed of the highest quality while developing the breeding programme for another ten years. As well as maintaining many of the original lines that Florence Bellis and the Jared’s introduced she worked extensively on the double primroses and a new Gilded Ginger strain. Keeping up with the times, Barnhaven was also successfully launched on the web and Angela produced The Barnhaven Book. In 2000, due to health reasons she reluctantly had to step down.

Lynne and David met Angela when they first moved over to France from the UK in 1991 as they happened to buy a house in the same village. They started helping out at the nursery, and for several years were pollinating, potting, sowing etc and gradually became hooked. Already keen gardeners, they had no professional experience in running a horticultural business as David used to work as a site manager / technical draughtsman and Lynne as a secretary so when Angela asked them to take over the reins in the summer of 2000, they were thrilled but somewhat daunted at the task. They moved the nursery to a new site just a few kilometres away at Keranguiner, Plestin-les-grèves. Originally it consisted of two shade tunnels and two plastic covered tunnels, which were open at the sides so that the plants got plenty of ventilation but they were able to pollinate in the dry.

Lynne took on almost single-handedly the breeding programme and produced hundreds of exciting new double primroses (her favourites) and new strains such as Tango, while at the same time maintaining the original Barnhaven gene pool. She also managed the hellebore breeding programme that started in 2004 when they agreed to take on the collection of Jan Kay, a passionate hellebore lover based in the UK.

David caught the auricula bug and gradually introduced a Show auricula collection to Barnhaven. He enjoyed expanding the collection and sharing his passion for these extraordinary flowers. This included taking on Val Woolley’s UK National Collection of Alpine auriculas when she retired in 2016.

Until then the nursery had mainly been focused on selling quality seed but they developed the market for plants at specialist flower shows in France and around Europe. David became a well-known figure at the plant fairs shows for his funny accent, his cowboy hat and beautiful displays, winning many prizes along the way. They introduced many people in France to primroses where they had become a very old-fashioned, almost forgotten plant, with many customers commenting ‘‘So primroses aren’t just yellow…! C’est des petits bijoux’. The international internet business also developed hugely with the on-line sale of plants and the help of their son Daniel who became its webmaster. From the beginning, they were committed to sharing their passion for their plants and opened up the nursery once a year to visitors launching the popular open days which still attract many loyal customers.

David retired officially in 2014 due to health reasons though he continued to help out building auricula theatres and going to plant shows. Lynne has also officially retired but is still keeping a beady eye on the nursery and you will be sure to find her wandering somewhere on site amongst the flowers most days.

My husband Rob and I arrived in the summer of 2011 to help my parents with the growing workload in the nursery. We learnt the ropes on the job, though I still had remembered helping with the pollinating when I was a teenager. I have now taken on the primrose breeding programme and developed the Primula sieboldii collection, adding the Japanese cultivars that I am particularly fond of. We also added botanical Cyclamen to the collection. Putting my language skills to use, I helped launch the German website and now deal with most of the emails and advertising. In 2015, I co-wrote with Lynne, The Plant Lover’s Guide to Primula, published by Timber Press. 

Rob, a keen pianist like Florence Bellis, gradually took over the management of the auricula collection and put his mathematical brain to the task of dealing with the accounting and now manages most of the administration and orders. He has become a whizz at packaging whilst also helping out with many of the other tasks such as dividing plants, fixing pumps etc.

We officially took over the business in 2019. Since the double whammy of Brexit and Covid, the nursery has had to adapt, cutting back on many of the larger shows which meant excessive travel costs and time away from the nursery. We now only do a few local plant fairs and are concentrating on producing quality plants and seeds for sale on-line, the focus being on maintaining the old strains we have in the collection and historical cultivars but not forgetting the fun aspect of creating something new along the way.

As we missed the travelling, we also decided to welcome Wwoofers to the nursery as a way of meeting like-minded plant people and sharing what we do. We also often have trainees and work experience students as a way of passing on the skills we have learnt.

We are both also committed to adapting the nursery to a new way of growing plants that is more respectful of the environment with careful consideration of chemical use, water and recycling. Please see our page on our production for more details.

We have inherited a heavy and precious burden and we are committed to safe-guarding the work of all the people that have gone before us and to ensure that the genetic plant heritage is not lost. We are also aware of the importance of maintaining some of the rarer species that are disappearing from the wild with the impact of climate change and ecological damage. We hope to continue to produce beautiful plants for your gardens for many years to come and with the wish that one day we will be able to pass Barnhaven’s magic wand on to the next generation.