From Red Hall Nursery to The Arium
Red Hall Nursery first opened over 60 years ago as a series of fifteen small greenhouses built behind Red Hall Mansion. At the time of its creation, it was considered to be a state of the art facility and centralised the city's growing production, rather than having it spread across a number of large parks.
It stayed this way until the 1980s, when the site was dramatically extended to allow for an extra seven acres of indoor growing space. Since then, the city's requirements have grown and the nursery began supplying many other local authorities across the country - even as far afield as the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth.
Red Hall Nursery's national reputation grew and led Leeds to become one of the most floral cities in the UK, but this also meant the site reached growing capacity. In October 2017, the site relocated to its new home on the outskirts of Thorner and rebranded as The Arium. It is the biggest local authority nursery in the country with a 19,000m2 glasshouse, enabling it to produce over three million plants a year.
