Our Brands

Our Brands

Traditional and innovative brands for the keen gardener based on good gardening practices

Our Brands2

Our Brands

Traditional and innovative brands for the keen gardener based on good gardening practices

Our Brands3

Our Brands

Traditional and innovative brands for the keen gardener based on good gardening practices

Our Brands

Gardeners trust our brands…

Many of our leading brands have an interesting background and here is a brief walkthrough of the more well-known ones.

Vitax, the Company’s name and generic brand name, was coined by Eric Hutchinson, the first Managing Director of the Company and author of the Vitax Gardening Book. Records in the Company archives show his alternatives around the adjective “vital”, meaning “essential to organic life”.

The iconic name in ant and insect control, derives its name (and font) from the outside marking stamp on the wooden packaging crates in which it was delivered to the Company from Japan in the 1960s. The name NIPPON displayed the country of origin, meaning JAPAN.

For SBK, the weedkiller for tough weeds, the marketing people thought long and hard about a name in the 1970s and came up with a clever acronym for Synchemicals Brushwood Killer, and what an enduring name it has become.

Q4 was developed in the 1960's by Dr David Willis, Vitax Technical Manager at Burscough Bridge from 1962-1969 and was the first commercial fertiliser produced to contain chelated trace elements. Working with David Dugdale, our then chemist, Dr Willis released various formulations for nursery trials with Europa Horticultural Industries, who achieved impressive growing results with one particular variation of the base fertiliser, number 4 of trial group B. The technical team suggested coining the product B4, but Mr Hutchinson, the Vitax MD, favoured the prefix letter Q, with that letter splashed in newspaper headlines and on the tip of everyone's tongues in those days,with the building at the Clyde of the famous Queen Elizabeth 2, or QE2 as she was commonly known. So Q4 was launched.

We love our gardens and our pets and Stay Off has been created as a repellent and deterrent to help animals stay off garden areas. Using both natural predator scents and ultrasonic waves, 'Stay Off' does exactly what it says on the label!

6X, in gardening terms means six times, due to the fact that this wonderful fibrous compost and fertiliser produced from poultry manure is said to produce six times more than the comparable use of traditional farmyard manure.

Our award winning snail and slug deterrent, Slug Gone, is a brand name coining its descriptive action.

Visit the Slug Gone website

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