1961
Red Roofs Nursery was founded by Peter Dunford, purchasing the 5-acre Dunswell site. At the time the site was made up of a small cottage, 200m2 Dutch-light greenhouse and arable land. The first crops grown were field vegetables sold to market.
1967
The first modern glasshouse was built, replacing the Dutch-light greenhouse. This was a larger, permanent structure approximately 2m high. Over the next 4 years the Dunswell site was redeveloped into 4 acres of up-to-date glasshouse.
1971
Red Roofs Nursery Joined the local grower selling cooperative, The Society of Growers and Traders (SGT) which sold our tomatoes and lettuce to supermarkets.
Mid 1970's
Investment in an environmental computer to control the internal environment and irrigation in the greenhouse. Jean, Peter’s wife become more involved in the business, doing the admin, payroll and working in the Packhouse.
1983
As part of SGT, we were the first company to grow little gem lettuce for supermarkets.
1987
Peter’s son, Chris, graduated from the University of Bath with a degree in Horticulture. Chris brought new technical growing knowledge from his degree and experience working at VHB. Over the next few years Red Roofs began growing more tomatoes and less lettuce.
1990s
Borehole dug for crop water and started using bee hives to pollinate the tomato crops.
1992
“The Last Lettuce” – Red Roofs Nursery stopped growing lettuce, moving to growing a single annual crop of standard round tomatoes.
1998
Purchase of The North Moor Lane site. At the time the 12-acres site had 2-acres of 2m high glass, taking the business up to 6-acres of glass. 1998 was also the year the 3rd Generation of the family business (Alex & Kieran) were born.
2000
Commissioned 2 2mW Combined Heat Power (CHP) engines, one at each site for heat and CO2 enrichment.
2001
In 2001 we started growing baby plum tomatoes in addition to standard round tomatoes.
2004
Built our first modern greenhouse with raised gutter growing system , standing around 5.5 meters tall with raised gutter growing system at the North Moor Lane site, covering 1.5 acres.
2005
100% baby plum tomatoes, stopped growing standard round tomatoes to focus on baby plum production. At the time the baby plum were weighed loose on site and heat sealed into punnets elsewhere.
2009
The tall-modern glasshouse on The North Moor Lane Site was expanded to 4 acres, taking the business’ cropped area up to 10 acres of glass.
2013
The Packhouse was upgraded to facilitate pre-packaging of baby plum into heat sealed punnets for transport directly to supermarkets. In 2013, Chris’ wife, Janann, also joined the business, as ESC manager. She brings an essential skill set specialising in health and food safety compliance across the business.
2014
Further development of the North Moor Lane site with construction of a new 4-acre modern glasshouse with raised gutters, taking the North moor site up to 10-acres, 8 acres of modern glass house and 2 acres of low glass. This was the last year the 1960’s-built greenhouse was cropped at The Dunswell site, with all production moving down to the North Moor site and a new Packhouse built.
2015
A ground source heat pump was commissioned on the North Moor lane site.
2018
Investment in a multi-head weighing machine for the Packhouse, weighing tomatoes into punnets and automatically feeding the punnets through the heat sealer. This increased efficiency and moved away from filling punnets by hand.
2020
Redevelopment of the Dunswell site with tall-modern glasshouse with a raised gutter system. The CHP was removed and a ground source heat pump was commissioned for site and pure CO2 system was installed. Sadly, Peter passed away before he could see this.
In the same year Alex joined the business (3rd generation) after graduating from Writtle University College with a degree in Horticulture.
2021
Kieran joined the business (3rd generation) after graduating from The University of Nottingham with a degree in Plant Science bringing experience working in the strawberry industry.
