Crowders’ James Carter: Working with a single contract grower is the best route every time

by Bethany Vann | 12 Jun 25 | From the Mag, Long Reads

Pro Landscaper’s Most Influential Best Contract Grower winner, Crowders on how it manages over 330 acres of growing capacity. 

Growing since 1798, Crowders has been operating advanced procurement contracts since its inception, which commercial director James Carter says has positioned the nursery as a trusted and innovative supplier in the industry.

Commercial director at Crowders, James Carter

Back in 2017 the nursery was awarded the contract to grow the first tranche of up to seven million native trees and shrubs for the UK’s flagship HS2 railway project.

The nature of contract growing means that the nursery will be growing thousands upon thousands of units at a given time, Carter adds “we’ve got orders on the ground right now for one and half million units”, with order noticed on average of two to three years – “the longest notice we’ve ever had is eight years.”

Staggeringly high numbers in both regards, but this is nothing out of the ordinary for Crowders, as Carter explains: “In terms of order quantity, about 30% of our orders are contracts and we have 330 acres of growing capacity – a good 80% of which is always in production.”

Biosecurity and plant health is a fundamental consideration when working with multi-year long contracts in such high volumes, as Carter explains:

“We’re Plant Healthy certified now and we’ve got our own plant health champions, which includes our directors.”

He adds that while there is an argument to be made that trees and plants don’t show significant changes every week, pests and disease can, and that’s the secret he says, “you’ve got to do regular crop inspections – in our business, we have about a nine and a half year life cycle from our youngest product to our oldest.”

Which as he says requires constant vigilance – “it’s all down to advanced procurement and advanced planning”, adding that contract growing encourages “crop consistency” and working with a single contract grower is the “best route every single time.”