Long before students crossed the campus of Brunel, the land along Kingston Lane was filled with the scent of roses and chrysanthemums. For nearly a century, the site was home to one of Britain’s most remarkable horticultural enterprises: the Lowe & Shawyer nursery, once recognised as the largest cut-flower nursery in the United Kingdom.
The story began in 1864, when a young gardener named Joseph Lowe started growing plants in a modest six-foot by four-foot frame in Uxbridge. What began as a small local business quickly flourished. By 1868, Lowe had moved his expanding operation to two acres of land on Kingston Lane — land that would later become part of the Brunel campus.
Within a few years, the nursery expanded rapidly, with greenhouses, frames, and specialist flower cultivation transforming the landscape. By the 1880s, Lowe employed local workers and developed a reputation for producing exceptional plants and flowers. The nursery became especially famous for chrysanthemums and roses.
As demand for flowers grew in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, Lowe’s nursery evolved into Lowe & Shawyer, a major commercial enterprise supplying flowers to Covent Garden Market and beyond. At its height, the company covered vast acres of glasshouses and cultivated millions of blooms annually. The nursery became one of the defining industries of Uxbridge, employing large numbers of local men and women in greenhouse work, packing, cultivation, and transport.
The nursery’s history also reflects the changing story of Britain. After the First World War, the company employed former soldiers and undertook local improvement works, including the straightening of the River Pinn to provide jobs during difficult economic times. In the Second World War, parts of the nursery were converted to grow tomatoes and food crops as part of the national war effort. The enormous glasshouses even confused German bombers during blackout conditions, appearing from the air like large stretches of water absent from Luftwaffe maps.
Lowe & Shawyer’s influence extended far beyond horticulture. Their success became woven into the identity of Uxbridge itself. Chrysanthemums from the nursery were incorporated into the former Uxbridge Borough Council coat of arms which is remarkable as of flowers rarely appear in civic heraldry.
By the 1950s, however, changing economic conditions and increasing development pressures brought an end to the nursery era. The site was gradually cleared, with large auctions dispersing thousands of greenhouse structures, pots, pipes, boilers, and equipment. Wimpey, the construction company, proposed building more than 1,000 houses across 120 acres of the former nursery land, with additional open space and council housing included in the plans. The proposal would have dramatically altered the character of Uxbridge, increasing the local population by thousands. The plans were rejected by Middlesex County Council because the land formed part of the Green Belt.
In the meantime, at the beginning of the 1960s, Brunel College of Advanced Technology was rapidly expanding and seeking a new permanent home. The college required a large site where it could develop modern teaching buildings, laboratories, and student facilities suitable for a growing technological university.
In 1964, part of the former Lowe & Shawyer nursery site was purchased for £65,000 to become the new home of the college. This marked the beginning of a remarkable transformation. Land once covered by acres of flower beds evolved into a modern university campus.
In June 1966, Brunel College of Advanced Technology received its Royal Charter and officially became Brunel University. The university opened in Uxbridge later that same year, establishing a new chapter in the history of the Kingston Lane site.
Although the physical nursery disappeared, traces of its legacy remain embedded within the university landscape. The Joseph Lowe Building commemorates the nursery’s founder, while the campus itself stands as a reminder of how places continually evolve over time. The transformation from one of Britain’s greatest flower nurseries into a centre of higher education is one of the most remarkable stories in Brunel’s local heritage.
As we continue to explore Brunel’s history through the archives, the story of Lowe & Shawyer offers a glimpse into a forgotten landscape — one where Uxbridge quite literally blossomed.