Meet the family growing 60,000 poinsettias for Scotland just in time for Christmas

Each year they are sold in their millions as the festive season rolls in, filling out garden centres and supermarket shelves from the end of November.

But this Christmas tradition is a relatively recent one. Even 60 years ago, the poinsettia plant, which is indigenous to Mexico, was largely unheard of among the UK masses.

Among the first people to attempt to bring the poinsettia to the British market was a man called Robert Spray, who grew up helping his father, an ex-soldier called Joseph, grow flowers and vegetables in his small holding in Leamington Spa.

He went on to study horticulture at Writtle College and Kew Gardens, before embarking on a successful career in park management in Southend-on-Sea, West Bromwich, and eventually Kirkcaldy.

In the 1960s, Mr Spray read about the poinsettia in an American journal, and had several dry woody cuttings sent to Britain from the US to coax them back to life.

But when he took the plants to market, after months of growing them, he was met with a flat rejection. The buyers told him they would never sell.

Fast-forward 60 years, and his granddaughter, Carolyn Spray, runs one of the largest poinsettia nurseries in the UK, tucked away beneath the Pentland Hills in the town of Loanhead, less than six miles from Edinburgh.

Each year, the family-owned Pentland Plants grow and sell over 60,000 poinsettias in their vast greenhouses - supplying most garden centres in Scotland and some in the north of England.

“People in the UK started to realise they were quite a Christmassy plant and that they can last a long time in the house,” said Carolyn’s father, David Spray, explaining the dramatic rise of the poinsettia plant in the decades after his father first tried to market them.

“But at first they said that no one would ever want them.”

Now, over seven million poinsettias are sold in the UK every year. They are considered a classic Christmas plant alongside the likes of holly, ivy and mistletoe.

At Pentland Plants, the lengthy growing process begins in July, when the rooted cuttings for the largest poinsettias arrive on site. Once potted, the plants are kept in the greenhouse at around 23C for several weeks.

At first the pots are placed close together, before they are pinched to allow them to branch. The pots are then progressively spaced out over the following weeks and months.

The growth and height of each plant is closely monitored, with watering and feeding adjusted to meet the requirements for each pot size, which range from a tiny six centimetre pot to a 30 centimetre bell pot.

While crimson red is the most striking and recognisable of the poinsettias, and the kind you’re most likely to find in your local supermarket, breeding programs to produce different varieties of poinsettia have expanded exponentially in recent decades.

Now, poinsettias come in dozens of different colours, shapes and sizes - making them more than just a plant for Christmas.

“Red is still the main and most popular colour, but now you can get them in white, yellow, dark pink, champagne pink. You can get spotty ones and splotched ones,” said Mr Spray.

“And they are a perennial plant, so they can last as long in the house as you want them too. We tend to keep ours till around March.”

Ten years ago, Pentland Plants installed a Biomass heating system to heat its greenhouses and garden centre.

The game-changing system significantly reduces the centre’s carbon footprint by thousands of tonnes a year and keeps fuel costs down - enabling the family to keep their poinsettias warm throughout the winter.

“We couldn’t do it without our biomass heating. It’s the only way we’re able to keep growing our poinsettias every year, otherwise the costs would just be too high.”

Poinsettias and Christmas

Poinsettias have a long history that spans centuries and continents. Cultivation started with the Aztecs in Mexico, who used the poinsettia bracts to make red dye and medicines.

The plant began to be associated with Christmas in the 17th century, when Franciscan priests began using the flower in nativity processions. It naturally became associated with Christmas as one of the few native plants which flowered during the festive season.

The poinsettia was introduced to the United States in the 1800s by Joel Poinsett, the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico. The name poinsettia is derived from him.

Fast forward another century, and the plants started to be cultivated in the USA by a German immigrant named Albert Ecke, who moved to Los Angeles in 1906.

Later generations of the Ecke family successfully marketed the plants as a Christmas flower during the second half of the 20th century, and they are now widely associated with the festive season.