I recently visited the In-Excess Garden Centre on Netherhampton Road and as many readers will remember, it was once known as Flowerland.

In the 1940s Stan and Peggy Mirfin were engaged to be married and as they drove along the Netherhampton Road, they saw what they thought would be an ideal spot to live. They talked to the farmer and finally bought an acre of ground from him on which they built a bungalow to live.

Mr Mirfin had his own mobile greengrocery and grew most of the produce on land at the back of their home. They then decided to build a conservatory to house some tomato plants which led to people coming to their bungalow especially to buy them. The next step was to build a greenhouse which gave room for another 300 tomato plants but as the business grew, Mr Mirfin received his call-up papers for the Second World War. Their son Ken was only three-days-old when he left to join-up.

This didn’t deter Peggy, who cultivated the whole acre herself and sold the produce to a shop in Salisbury. When her husband returned, they bought a second acre from the farmer and put up another greenhouse – they also decided to take a stall on the market. It was shortly after this that their daughter Pamela was born - the day before the birth Peggy was getting the flowers ready to take to market!

Eventually the Mirfin’s bought five acres of ground and erected many more greenhouses. Mrs Mirfin’s main concern was preparing flowers for the market stall which she ran twice a week with the help of her son Ken.

During the 1990s I worked at Flowerland every Saturday and I often saw old Mrs Mirfin toiling away in the greenhouse. When she looked around Flowerland it must have given her a great deal of satisfaction to think that she and her husband had built every bit of it themselves.