Hare Spring Cottage Plants: RHS Malvern Spring Festival Master Grower 2025
The RHS celebrates the incredible work of specialist growers and nurseries through Show season with the Master Grower scheme, showcasing exhibitors with a dedicated display in the Floral Marquee.
At RHS Malvern Spring Festival 2025 the Master Growers are Hare Spring Cottage Plants, who grow hardy perennials, specialising in Camassia, Sidalcea and Uvularia. Originally based in North Yorkshire, the nursery uprooted and moved to South Devon in 2022 and have continued to thrive with mail order sales, talks, workshops, open visit days and, of course, exhibiting at flower shows. The nursery is run by husband and wife team Stella and Malcolm Exley.
Malcolm and Stella Exley
I quickly realised that I didn’t want to be stuck in an office again, I wanted to be outside with my hands in the muck.
Following her lifelong love of camassias, Stella started growing and amassing plants, developing what would become three national collections of Camassia, Sidalcea and Uvularia. Having waited so long to be doing what she wanted to do, Stella immediately wanted to exhibit and got in touch with the RHS, but they suggested that she tried learning her craft at local flower shows first. It was at such an event that Stella met Garden Designer Chris Beardshaw, who asked her to grow 2,000 camassias for his RHS Chelsea Garden.
Stella’s camassias in the Gold medal-winning Morgan Stanley Healthy Cities Garden designed by Chris Beardshaw at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2015
National Collections
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Hare Spring Cottage Plants
National Collections
Hare Spring Cottage Plants
Merging her collection with that of late collector Margaret Owen, Stella now has over 85 cultivars of Camassia. She grows everything outside and has a strict, no-nonsense test for all new plants:
If they don’t come through the winter, they’re shillly shally and emotional and they don’t get a place on the nursery.
In 2022, the nursery moved from North Yorkshire to South Devon. It was a bold and dramatic upheaval at the time but, other than heavier rainfall, the only major change for the nursery has been that plants flower around three weeks earlier, or as Stella puts it; “Plants that used to be perfect for RHS Chelsea are now just right for RHS Malvern Spring.”
A butterfly enjoys a camassia at Hare Spring Cottage Plants
Camassia really crave moisture – unlike most bulbs. If you’ve got difficult, soggy, boggy areas, camassias will be incredible.
Camassia care tips
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The only people who would struggle to grow Camassia are those with free-draining, sandy soil. Otherwise, any space can have camassias, whether you’ve a herbaceous border or acres of land for naturalistic swathes of flowers.
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If you want to grow in containers, in the third year you’ll want to split them, to make sure they don’t dry out.
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Camassia should get enough moisture from the ground, but if you have a few dry weeks, do water them.
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Remember, slugs hate camassias!
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Try varieties ‘Maybelle’ and ‘Blue Danube’ for the deepest lush purples.
