Jan Ravensberg and the story behind Ireland's Ravensberg Nurseries

JAN Ravensberg’s eyes light up when he talks about trees. It’s early November and we’re sitting in a golf buggy in the most rural of rural Ireland when I ask him if he can pick a favourite. 

“Not really,” he chuckles. “Every time I find another one I like. There are just too many!” 

That feels like the perfect answer from a man who can trace his nursery roots back to before the French Revolution. Dutch-born, his wholesale nursery on the outskirts of Clara, Co. Offaly, has long been seen as the place to go for anyone truly interested in trees. Known for his uncanny ability to coax almost any seed to germinate, his reputation for growing the weird and the wonderful (more on that later) goes before him. 

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“I’m a bit plant mad, so had to find a way of living off my hobby but still surviving on it. I had to grow the ‘bread-and-butter’ stuff as well, but I tried to have a very wide range of more unusual plants – that’s working out quite well. Having a lot of unusual stuff does mean it is very difficult to grow! You can never find enough of it.

Glasshouses are full of young trees. (Image: FJ)

“The problem with unusual stuff is that it doesn’t look good as a young plant, unless you know your plants.” 

Affable and welcoming, Jan is the sixth in a line of seven generations of nurserymen, dating back to 1777. His was a childhood surrounded by trees, having grown up in Boskoop – a Dutch town famous for its many nurseries – but it was also rich in history.

As a young boy, he watched the sky fill with western Allied planes during the Berlin blockade in the late 1940s. 

Another monumental event pushed him into the trade at an extraordinarily tender age.

At just 13, his father died, forcing him to leave school and become the family breadwinner; he continued to work part-time with nearby nurseries while completing his secondary school education by night. By 17, he had already established his own nursery business. 

“The first Regensberg to have been written down as a nurseryman was in 1777, but at that time, I think, it was mainly shelter material,” he says. “Ornamental stuff came out the cities in Holland when the country had a wealthy period. 

Metasequoia, one of Jan’s favourites. (Image: FJ)

“My father died when I was 13. I still remember a lot of things. In that time, it was 1953 and Holland was recovering from the war. The only thing in that period was that you knew it was going to be better – you just didn’t know how much better.” 

Not that Jan was for waiting around to find out. In 1972, together with his young wife Siena and their two children, he made a life-changing move to Ireland. A job with Sap Nurseries in the Moyvalley area of Co. Kildare got things started, before he struck out on his own, buying a centuries-old land steward’s house and several rolling acres in Clara where he soon established Ravensberg Nurseries.

Those early days were very different, both in terms of Ireland’s tree nursery sector – it might be accurate to say it didn’t really have one – and the site that has long fuelled his plant passion. 

“Neglected,” he remembers, when asked what the nursery was like then. “It had old boiler houses. The glasshouses were old but useful, because we needed winter protection. It’s not often the frost but the wet that is the problem. It helped me at the time when getting started. 

“In the area where I am from [Boskoop], there were several nurseries and the competition was fierce. You had to either specialise or grow unusual stuff. But a friend of mine who lives in Holland and does the unusual stuff finds it hard to make a living because he cannot grow the bread-and-butter stuff. 

The nursery is an hour from Dublin. (Image: FJ)

“During the time, I have learned what you can grow in Ireland. We grow stuff that’s only suitable for the south-west and along the coast. Things I also had to look at – that you never had to in Holland – included which plants are lime tolerant as there’s a very high pH in the soil. We had to learn where to grow acid soil plants. 

“There were a few nurseries that had great plant knowledge because they were as mad as me! But it was very limited, and still is.” 

Although it’s anything but limited under Jan’s watch. During the course of an hour’s tour – done mostly via the buggy due to his mobility issues – it becomes clear that his is a nursery where people go to find trees – and plants – rarely grown elsewhere. Wisteria is one of his specialities. Others include evergreen climbing hydrangea. There are trees originally from Colombia and further afield, which Jan still tends to when he can. A section of one glasshouse remains reserved for him to experiment as he sees fit, with species including Chinese taxodium, Chinese swamp cypress, maple acer – there are plants straight from the botanic gardens in Beijing.  

There is a constant feeling that the nursery is a place that has been touched by different generations of Irish life. Take one Sequoia, for example. Towering above the site, it can be seen from almost every point of our journey through it. Still, there’s a glow of excitement when Jan decides to pull up next to it. 

“That was one left over that was too bad to sell,” he says, explaining he planted it himself around 40 years ago. “I never would have planted it there if I knew we were going to expand the nursery the way we have – it’s incredibly in the way! Hans [his son, who also runs the nursery] would cut it down.” 

But Jan loves it. Stopping to have his picture taken at its base, he coaxes FJ to feel its bark, which is strikingly wet. 

“In Nevada, they get virtually no water in the summer. Here they get that and the run-off from the pots. That has helped it to grow.” 

Jan standing under a Sequoia tree he planted around 40 years ago. (Image: FJ)

Gesturing to a row of saplings growing either side of it, he explains that a major part of the nursery’s business remains its bread-and-butter plants, such as Portuguese laurel, although few of these give Jan the same joy as his favourites. Staying on the site for around one to six years, his trees eventually make their way to Ireland’s garden centres or are sold to private landscapers. 

So, what else does he love to grow? 

“Taxodium – if you want a real good one, you plant five of them and keep cutting out every two years. Then you’ll find the one with the nicest stem. It’s one of my favourite trees if you have the soil for it. 

“Metasequoia is also one of my favourites. 

“Redwood is a good seller. As a small tree, it does very well. Once you have them in the ground, they are light tolerant. 

The nursery has changed beyond all recognition since Jan took it over. (Image: FJ)

“Coastal redwood is different. I’ve seen the biggest one in California and the top of the biggest trees have scales as well.” 

The love Jan – who is turning 82 this month – has for his craft is obvious throughout. Unlike most Irish nurseries, almost 90 per cent of his stock is propagated from cuttings and seed. This has allowed him to cultivate the distinctive palette he has become well-known for. Importantly, success rate remains high, with Jan remarking that it can be around 100 per cent, although “that’s not every time and it’s not every species”. 

Before we met, it had been remarked that he was the “best plantsman in Ireland”.

Another person even went so far as to extend that moniker to the rest of Europe. His was a reputation that proceeded him, and in the month prior to the tour he’d featured in the Irish Times, the country’s leading mainstream newspaper. 

“I buy all my silver birch trees from Jan because the particular strain he grows is the very best there is,” garden designer Paul Martin told the paper (Jan propagates all of the nursery’s stock of silver birch trees from grafted cuttings). 

“All the best Irish gardens, both private and public, are filled with wonderful plants that originally came from his nursery,” added Daphne Levinge Shackleton. 

In the present, the golf buggy eases its way through another glasshouse and a few questions come to mind. 

Where does Jan stand on the native versus non-native debate? 

Several trees tower above the site. (Image: FJ)

“They are all mad about native trees, but what would you call native? How far back are you going? Magnolias were native in Ireland before the Ice Age. Native Irish trees – there are very few. Beech is not native, chestnut is not native. Lime trees are not native. 

“A few years ago I made some cuttings from ash trees, just to see if I could grow them.” 

Why did he choose Ireland? 

“I was on holiday one year before and I liked the place. There was almost no competition at that time.” 

Do they still export products to the UK? 

“We have sold stuff to the UK in the past but that is getting more difficult now – you can’t send stuff on trolleys. Transport costs are more expensive. It’s cheaper for me to send stuff to Holland. We don’t have the same problems with Northern Ireland. 

“There is virtually no one producing stuff here. Any of the nurseries that grow plants here are mostly importing them.” 

Our tour ends with a quick stop in Jan’s mini arboretum, a fine collection of trees that stand a short drive down from the car park. There is a slight air of sadness, though.

Hans – while adept at running the business side of things – doesn’t share Jan’s near total devotion to plants. Nor do any of Hans’ children. One staff member (there are six in all) is being trained, but Jan suspects the Ravensberg dynasty “will end with me”. 

Leaves have an autumnal feel during the visit. (Image: FJ)

Until then, he appears just to be taking every chance he can to enjoy the things that have given him so much joy throughout his life. 

“I’ve seen so many nice trees – giant ones. We went to the States and we saw the biggest tree of every species from the Mexican border to the Oregon border. Every tree was impressive.”