Valley Grown Salads and Valley Grown Nurseries are wholly owned by Jimmy and Vince Russo. Valley Grown Salads was established in 1985, followed by the opening of the Nursery operation in 1998; both with the intention of bringing the very best of English produce to high-end supermarkets.

Jimmy and Vince’s father, Angelo, was the very first Italian to purchase a glasshouse way back in 1963, beginning a very long family tradition in the art of growing produce.

Jimmy and Vince had a vision of being able to supply the finest quality salad lines that were originally grown by the first Italian immigrants who arrived in the UK throughout the 1950s. Angelo came to the UK on 21st October 1952 when only a handful of Sicilians lived in the UK on a 4-year work permit.

Valley Grown Salads sold only cucumbers in its first year of existence, slowly adding lettuce and sweet peppers to the range. Several years later the supply base expanded to include aubergines and tomatoes.

Having worked extremely hard for up to 16 hours per day in the early years, the partnership grew quickly and soon it was realised that more packing facilities were necessary and so we purchased our current site at Sedge Green Road which sits on 2.5 acres of land and is equipped with some of the best packing machinery on the market. The company has a workforce of some 120 staff and it is expanding year on year.