In November 2007 a friend of mine who sold old postcards at card fairs was retiring and giving up going to fairs anymore and was keen to sell off her stock. In conversation I asked if she had any cards of Bloxham and she said she had and would let me have a look through them. She brought the cards to me just before Christmas and some I had copies of already, but there was one that I had never seen before and was very interested in. The picture was of a market garden and the caption was ‘The Hollies Nurseries, Bloxham, Oxon’. She wanted quite a lot of money for that card, but a friend said if I really wanted it she would give me money instead of a present for Christmas, so the card was mine.

Now I wanted to know more about the nursery and my quest began.
There was no date or signature on the card, but I guessed it was about 80 or 90 years old. I looked at the census for 1901, but could find nothing. I rang the oldest man in Bloxham who was over 90 years old, but he couldn’t remember a Hollies Nursery.
The picture showed a very distinctive wall around the gardens and someone suggested it could possibly be the one near the church as there was a holly hedge the other side of the churchyard, but it was not the right wall. I also looked at the wall near Park Close, but it was not right, as the one on the card was brick with tiles along the top and there was a farm in the background. It was still a mystery.
Then I had an idea to look in Kelly’s Directory for 1911 and there it was – The Hollies Nursery, owned by Frederick Johnson. It did not say exactly where the nursery was, but I knew of a Mr Johnson who used to have a nursery in Twyford and so I rang him to ask if any of his ancestors once lived in Bloxham and I was in luck. He said he would love to see the postcard as he had never seen one like it and Frederick was his grandfather and had owned the Hollies Nursery. I visited him and he said the nursery was by the big school and the house was called Bennetts.
A friend and I went to Bloxham in April last year on a walkabout to try to find the mystery wall. The gate to Bennetts was open but work was being done to the garden so we could not go in there. We walked back the way we had come and went to the area where Hunts farm once was – again nothing, we also looked around by Ellen Hinde Hall and couldn’t see anything from there. We walked through the Elephant and Castle yard and out into Rosebank again, and as we walked past Little Bennetts the gate was open and there it was, we could see it, the wall that had been around the nursery, the wall on my postcard.

My search was over and I was thrilled to bits

We went into the garden and found the owners who were very interested to find out the history of their garden and kindly took a photograph of the garden from the same place as the original showing the wall. After almost a hundred years two very old pear trees still exist against the wall, and the shape of the barn (now a house) that is behind the back wall in the original picture is still visible behind the tree on the new photograph.

The message on the reverse of the postcard reads –
Madam, I beg to inform you I have a very fine stock of roses and fruit trees in great variety at moderate prices, also wallflowers, pansies, Canterbury Bells and other spring blooming plants.
(Cabbage and lettuce plants etc.)

Frederick Johnson left Bloxham in 1912 and started his nursery in Twyford, Adderbury along with his son Harold. Frederick died in 1915 at the age of 69 and is buried in Bloxham churchyard with his wife Elizabeth who had died in 1906. Then Harold and his wife Bertha ran the Twyford Nursery until 1947 when their son James took over. Every Thursday and Saturday Johnsons had a stall on Banbury market selling their plants and cut flowers.
James retired in the 1980s and sadly he died on 13th November 2008 age 84, just a few months after we had been to show him the postcard and he told us about The Hollies Nursery. When we met him he was still looking after plants in his greenhouse and closing it at night in case of frost.
Anne Williams, April 2009