About Cold Comfort Plants
Our Story
We are Paul and Judy Rumbelow and we live at Cold Comfort Farm in Wolfscastle between Haverfordwest and Fishguard. Our respective parents were keen gardeners and as our children got older and our responsibilities less onerous our own interest in gardening and growing plants developed. We moved to Pembrokeshire in 2016 leaving behind a beautiful walled garden that we had rescued in Husband’s Bosworth, a small village in the East MIdlands.
Now, Paul takes responsibility for looking after the grass, hedges and wildflower meadow. He is also a dab hand at growing dahlias and is the go to person for taking cuttings.
Judy looks after the flowerbeds, grows all the plants from seeds and takes her turn at propagation though she is not as successful as Paul, probably because she is not as patient.
Both our daughters, Francesca and Harriet, live in Pembrokeshire and help out with the garden and the business.
Our Nursery
The nursery is open to customers between the middle of March and the beginning of September each year (have a look on our ‘Visiting Us’ page for details). We also attend a small number of local plant fairs, and give talks, workshops and tours at the farm in collaboration with the National Garden Scheme.
We have a large number of beautiful, healthy plants to choose from on our tables. As we grow all the plants ourselves, they change with the seasons. Our main aim is to provide you with plants that will do well in your garden, so we never force plants into flower. This may mean they sometimes look smaller than ones you might find in a garden centre, but they will be full of root and ready to grow on strongly when you put them out.
We aim to grow unusual plants. They might be an unusual variety of a familiar plant or a plant that is unfashionable, but in our opinion deserves to be revived. We especially like plants that are closely related to wild flowers as they often combine strong growth, tolerance of extreme weather conditions and are loved by wildlife.
We are happy to offer gardening advice if you need it and always welcome suggestions for new plants to grow.
Our Garden
If you would like to see our stock as established plants, we open our garden several times in the summer months through the National Garden Scheme. For a small fee, which goes to NGS charities, you can stroll round terraced flower beds, a rock garden, raised beds, greenhouses, a polytunnel and a gravel garden. We also have several acres of wildflower meadows to walk through, which are at their best in May, June and July. We welcome children on these days as we have plenty of space to run around.
Our garden is always a work in progress, so we hope visitors can find ideas to inspire their own gardening without feeling overwhelmed by perfection! We have plenty of weeds and problem areas and like most Pembrokeshire gardeners, we are plagued by strong winds throughout the year.
During these NGS events, we offer tea and a great selection of homemade cakes, and on weekday openings we offer light lunches including homemade bread. There are some lovely places to sit and enjoy the views and the garden, and if it rains we have comfortable indoor seating.
We are also able to offer private garden visits with refreshments for pre-booked groups of visitors.
What we do
- Nursery- the nursery is open from mid March to late August and regular customers often visit several times a year as new seasonal stock becomes ready.
- Deliveries- new for 2025 we will be offering deliveries via our new website. If you are in a hurry you can also order plants for collection at the farm. See our 'How to order' page for more info.
- Gardening Groups/Fairs- we also take our plants on the road to gardening groups and local country fairs- if you have a group or event you think might welcome a visit from our plant stall please get in touch to have a chat.
- Garden tours/talks- Finally we offer tours of our garden and talks about various aspects of gardening to small groups. We can provide light refreshments such as cake and tea.