A Look Back on Hortiwool's First Year

We've officially reached the milestone of completing our first full year with Hortiwool, so we thought this would be a great opportunty to look back on 2022, how far we've come and everything that we've achieved! 

How did Hortiwool come about?

Working with natural materials for more than 20 years, we originally harnessed the many benefits of wool for packaging innovations.

Recognising how many uses there were for such an amazing material, we have always encouraged the end user of our packaging to reuse the wool around the home, and share with our online #letsboxclever community.

Over the years, more and more people found numerous ways in which wool can be used in the garden, and with so much demand for more wool to become available, Hortiwool was born!

What is The Hortiwool Garden Pad?

We worked behind the scenes to investigate all of the benefits of using wool around the garden, and found out that it was even more incredible than we thought! Wool helps to retain moisture, boosting hydration, offers protection, insulation and even adds nutrition to the soil as it naturally breaks down.

The Hortiwool Garden pad can be used as packaged, cut to size, or broken apart in a variety of ways. Popular uses include:

• Hanging baskets liners

• Retention of moisture

• Nutrition for plant root balls

• Growing Micro Greens & Micro Herbs

• Protection against slugs

• Insulation from frost for young plants

• Capillary matting

• Mulching

• Compost aid

• Wildlife nesting

 

Introducing Hortiwool

In the spring, we attended BBC Gardeners World Live and Glee at the NEC in Birmingham, where we were able to connect with our customers, and the Garden Centre and Retail community for the first time.

We received some valuable feedback on our products, inspiration on how to develop it further, and even new inspiration and unique ways to use Hortiwool Garden Pads, for growing and nourishing plants!

 

New Additions to the Hortiwool Range

In addition to the Hortiwool Pouch, we added the Hortiwool Hanging Basket Liner, and Hortiwool Starter Pad to our range, allowing more variety of choice, colour, and size of wool garden pads.

The hanging basket liners, designed to fit 12, 14 and 16” baskets, became darker in colour to better suit baskets and are larger in size offering great versatility.

The Hortiwool Starter Pads offer consumers the option to buy a small singular pad, to get started with using wool in the garden.

 

Garden Centre Launch

As well as being available for purchase directly, Hortiwool became available to shop in stores, and is now sold in many Garden Centres, such as Blue Diamond, Hilliers, Burford and B&Q online!

 

Winning at Sustainability

As one of the highlights of the garden industry’s calendar, we attended the GIMA awards in October, walking away as joint winners of the Sustainability Award alongside Willsow, Sustainability Champions in the Garden Care category, and finalists in the Garden care, and Growing, Planting Equipment & Sundries categories!

 

All Season, Multi-Purpose Wool Pads

Throughout winter, our amazing online community continued to share the many ways in which Hortiwool can be used all year-round, from insulating beehives, preparing next year’s compost, and insulating the garden.

 

We’re so ready for what’s to come in 2023, and of course it wouldn't be possible without our #hortiwool community!

Catch us at the Garden Press Event, BBC Gardeners World Live and Glee, or find us on Instagram, Facebook and Tiktok @WeAreHortiwool