About Us

Hortica is an online department store for gardening and outdoor living which takes as its guiding principle (suitably adapted) William Morris’ stricture : have nothing about you which you do not either know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

We believe that a garden, whatever its size or style, should feed the soul as well as the eye – and ideally, the stomach too! This means self-expression, attention to detail, respect for the environment and a sense of the genius loci – the spirit of the place. Our choice of products reflects this philosophy.

We are committed to the principles of sustainable horticulture and to organic growing. You will find no chemicals and no peat-based products in our range. Over time we plan to move to a 100% certified organic offering of seeds and plants. At the present time, there are occasionally shortages of certified organic seed for particular cultivars and where this happens in respect of a heritage vegetable variety which we are particularly keen to stock we have decided to stock the seed on the grounds that bio-diversity is a key tenet of organic growing and it is vital that old and valued varieties not be lost. The other circumstance where seed may be stocked despite not being certified organic is where the producer is very small-scale and (a) has determined that the economics of obtaining certification do not add up; but (b) we are personally satisfied that the seed has been produced in a manner consistent with organic principles.

We hope you will enjoy browsing and that you will be pleased with what you choose. We are always grateful to receive customer feedback by the way so let us know how you get on.

Regards

Laura & Peter