Angela’s venture is about to grow

TIRED of ripping out fireplaces and building extensions, Angela Kenny has embarked on a new career.

The 48-year-old from Dobcross has started converting the one-acre site around her home in Platt Lane into a cottage plants and produce business.

For the past 10-years, Angela has worked with husband James in the family building business, J and A Kenny Builders, labouring and assisting her husband in a myriad of jobs.

“But the recession crucified the business, James had a couple of injuries and so I started looking at other ways to make a living,” Angela told me over coffee in the extensive gardens of her beautiful home between Dobcross centre and Delph.

She started visiting nurseries in Cheshire and Southport and discovered a world of plants, shrubs and trees which she now retails from her home.

“I travel far and wide to bring in stock and try to offer plants and produce that are not normally available from the larger commercial nurseries.

“I am not a nursery, and I don’t want to be, but there is a niche market and as word gets about, the customer base is growing week on week,” she added.

Passing trade and word-of-mouth has helped build the customer base to such a degree that Angela now stocks vegetables, too.

“I started bringing back a few new potatoes and soon people were asking for tomatoes and lettuce.

“I have always sold eggs to neighbours because we have had chickens for years, but now they simply can’t lay enough to meet demand,” she added.

Reclamation is another growing business stream with Angela and James sourcing chimney pots, old pans and pig troughs from antique stores and car boot sales. “These are proving really popular.

“People are looking for more ways of displaying their plants and decorating their gardens and keeping up with demand is proving difficult at the moment,” she says.

Angela is constantly funding expansion as she lays the foundations of her new business — delighted to be working in her own leaving the building work to James.