26 Apr 2025
One of St Albans’ most popular garden centres is celebrating seven decades since it was founded on seven and a half acres of land off the North Orbital Road.
Roger Aylett was just 21 when he set up Aylett Nurseries in 1955, having studied at Oaklands Institute of Agriculture and Horticulture – what is now Oaklands College – with the first crops a mix of dahlias, lettuce, gladioli and sweetpeas.
Originally from south London, Roger had relocated to St Albans with his family when the Second World War started in 1939, and over the course of the conflict grew vegetables to supplement their wartime rations.
Roger was encouraged to have his own vegetable plot, to which he eventually added sweet peas, dahlias and chrysanthemums.
He grew many seed crops which he sold to friends and neighbours, and bunches of cut flowers to the local greengrocers.
After practical training at the Childwickbury Estate and Puckeridge Park, Roger started his formal training at Oaklands in September 1953, and his parents were keen to purchase a nursery which would enable him to start a small business.
Unfortunately their search was in vain, so they began looking for a piece of land which could be developed from scratch. On April 4 1955 a 7.5 acre parcel of land was purchased and Aylett Nurseries was formed as a limited company, eventually opening when Roger completed his studies the following July. In the summer of 1955 a roadway was built and electricity and water pipes installed, with toilets, a packing shed and a small coal-fired greenhouse following.
The first boilers were installed in spring 1956, resulting in a bumper crop of tomatoes the following summer, which also saw the purchase of the first retail bench from a local scrap market for five shllings.
That same year Hazel Rowland, who was later to become Roger’s wife, joined the nursery for a year as a student.
Roger’s childhood interest had always been dahlias, and he exhibited Aylett’s crop for the first time at the Royal Horticultural Society in September 1957, before winning a gold medal in August 1961, the first of many over the years.
He later said: “My interest in dahlias started at a very early age when as a young boy I grew them in the back garden at home and gradually horticulture became a serious hobby and later a career…the seeds were sown!”
The first Autumn Festival took place in 1959, initially providing an opportunity for local flower arrangement societies to indulge in a friendly competition, but nowadays a showcase for the nursery’s dahlias.
As the business started to expand, 1960 saw the first major extension built, allowing for the sale of garden products alongside the farm shop, with a small area behind for trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants.
In the Great Autumn Shows of 1977 and 1994 the nursery was awarded the Williams Memorial Medal, which is presented to the best exhibit of plants or flowers of a single genus staged at one of the RHS’ shows during the course of a year.
In 1980, the nursery celebrated its 25th anniversary at St Albans Carnival by carrying the carnival queen on a float adorned with Aylett dahlias.
The garden centre was established in 1984, and has continued to grow ever since.
Roger Aylett went on to become a valued member of RHS Shows and dahlia committees, and was regularly seen assessing the dahlia trials at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey.
In 1998 he was awarded the RHS Veitch Memorial Medal for an outstanding contribution to the science and practice of horticulture, a moment he later described as the pinnacle of his career. The following year the National Dahlia Society awarded him their Silver Medal.
Roger published his autobiography, ‘50 Golden Gardening Years’ in 2005, and in 2010 Aylett Nurseries was rated the third best independent garden centre in the UK by Which? Gardening magazine.
Sadly Roger died that same year and Aylett Nurseries is now owned and run by his family, continuing to honour his legacy in the way he would have wished.
