Burncoose Nurseries mail order department despatched a record number of customer plant orders in the year to the end of March.

There were almost 11,000 internet, telephone and mail orders including trade and export orders to Europe, representing a 22% increase on the previous year. More than three-quarters of these orders via the nursery’s website.

With a few seasonal exceptions, the vast majority of orders for ornamental trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants were despatched within five working days by overnight courier as individual parcels or on pallets.

The Burncoose website received very nearly one million individual visits in the year – also a record and up 20% on the previous year. The website contains around 4,700 pages and 98 plant categories.

March was the busiest month, with a record 1,610 orders dispatched.

Andrew Mills, Burncoose’s nursery manager, said the continuing growth in mail order business had been “a severe test” for their two packing sheds and its staff of eight. “They have however responded well to the spring rush this year and we are all looking forward to the quieter summer months,” he added. “It is amazing how well-known the Burncoose website and horticultural expertise is throughout the UK. Better probably than within [our native] Cornwall. Few visitors to the nursery realise quite how large our plant mail order business actually is nationally or that nearly 80% of what we grow on site is actually despatched by mail order for outside Cornwall.”

The 68-page Burncoose Nurseries 2015 mail order catalogue was despatched to more than 30,000 customers. The catalogue and website lists almost 4,000 different plants for sale and there are nearly 20,000 pictures of individual plants in flower, in the garden, and as you would buy them on the website.

Charles Williams, senior partner, said: “To grow a modern internet mail order business from Cornwall you need excellent and constantly improving pictures. Our in-house photographer, Karol Pawlak, has spent much of the last eight years achieving what you see on our website today. Websites also need to be well managed on a daily basis with designs and layouts changing on a regular basis. To achieve this you need continuity and excellence. Burncoose is very fortunate to have worked with Forgecom in developing its website for the last 18 years.”

The next challenge is to make website fully compatible with mobile phones, possibly by early summer.