Visit to Wacks Wicked Plants

I recently got the honour of visiting Wacks Wicked Plants, a carnivorous plant nursery based in Yorkshire, UK. I met the lovely Peter and his wife at the Harrogate Spring Flower Show 2022 whilst I was up receiving the Aberconwy Award for my dissertation titled: ‘The morphological plasticity of Sarracenia seedlings in response to supplementary nutrients’.

We spoke for ages and they even invited me to a tour of their nursery if I was ever in the area. This August (2022), I was on holiday with my family at Sherwood forest in Nottinghamshire, which would be the closest I would likely ever be to Wacks for a long time so I seized the opportunity and made the trip to their nursery!

When I arrived I was bewildered by a series of poly tunnels and greenhouses, along with an outside area with specimen plants and a planted bog. They grow a selection of Sarracenia, Dionaea, Drosera, Utricularia, Darlingtonia and Cephalotus as well as other plants such as the carnivorous Bromeliad, Brocchinia reducta.

A few photos of their nursery, they had a large range of Sarracenia in all of their tunnels!

It was amazing to see how they had organised all their plants in different greenhouses and the array of colours was something to behold, I myself love an organised greenhouse! My favourite tunnels was those prominently featuring Sarracenia flava and Sarracenia leucophylla as well as their greenhouse which had their large specimen plants in which they used for their shows, some plants just work so well as a large cluster.

One of the most interesting things whilst visiting was the variety of peat free trials they were currently testing including coir chunks, bark and sphagnum mixes which gave me an insight of what peat free media I would like to trial next.

I knew before I arrived that I would not be going away empty handed, as a collector of mainly Sarracenia and Drosera, I knew what I was likely to come away with!

And I was right. I came away with 8 beautiful new plants consisting of 7 Sarracenia and 1 small Drosera. Not a single Sarracenia I had picked up I had even planned on getting, setting my sights on several dark pitchers along with some lovely size and shapes!

See what I got below! (plant names in order from left to right):

Sarracenia ‘Tapestry’ x ‘Llama’

Sarracenia x moorei dark red form

Sarracenia ‘brooks hybrid’ x (… x flava)

Sarracenia ‘bielsa’

Sarracenia 'Wildfire'

Sarracenia leucophylla alba

Sarracenia oreophila (sand mountain) x S. flava atropurpurea

Drosera x hybrida

I have been a happy customer at Wacks for a few years now, always happy with their quality of plants and once again I was not disappointed. If you are just starting out with your hobby then they are a great nursery to purchase from and definitely worth a visit!

And here is a few more photos of some of my favourite plants from their nursery: