Horticultural Services (HS) has long been a significantly key platform at the John Innes Centre since it relocated to Norwich in 1967. HS occupies a substantial 40% of the institutes land, offering an extensive range of growing environments.

Today’s on-site team of experienced horticulturalists offer a full horticultural service, looking after one million-plus plants requested by the research community each year, across 5775 m2 of glasshouse area and over 100 Controlled Environment Rooms (CERs).

HS has undergone a wide-ranging series of improvements since 2016 to ensure it is meeting the needs of the future. A multitude of enhancements have been introduced throughout the department such as ebb & flood benching, LED lights, and rainwater harvesting.

B18 CER Hall received 5.1 million refurbishment project beginning in 2020 to improve the containment measures required to allow the experimentation of plant pathogens in CERs. The new infrastructure reopened in 2021, containing 45 modern Hettich reach-in cabinets and a multipurpose 43 m2 Conviron walk-in growth room.

Growing facilities

Through its horticultural team, HS offers a variety of independent glasshouse services to customers in industry and research.

Glasshouses at the John Innes Centre range in sophistication from basic ‘frost free’ protection, all the way through to fully heated houses with supplementary lighting, thermal schrees and automatic irrigation.

Controlled environment rooms (CERs)

HS also offers CERs that allow complete control of all environmental parameters, such as:

• Negative pressure
• CO2 enrichment
• Variable light level
• High light level
• High humidity
• Vernalisation

Please contact us for any more information