Vintage Horticultural and Garden Machinery Club

G.D.Mountfield of Maidenhead are well known to be associated with a large range of horticultural machinery and accordingly the company did a vast amount of advertising.

Mountfield started their ‘proper’ marketing in 1967 after the appointment of Robinson Scotland and Partners who handled the marketing, advertising and public relations. Advertising was planned for amongst others the Sunday Times, Observer, Daily Mail and the Times.

Later advertising appears not only in gardening publications or through trade magazines but also in glossy magazines of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s such as The Tatler and Country Life – a place to market a premium brand but ultimately with a limited audience too.

It was reported in 1985 that Mountfield had been acquired by Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies for £4.25m. Although this did not include Mountfield’s distribution and retail subsidiaries of Robert. H. Andrews Ltd (see gallery) or Power Gardening (Slough) Ltd which were retained by Mountfield (source). Power Gardening (Slough) Ltd residing at 40 Stoke Road, was the distributor of Wheel Horse products from the 1960’s onwards (source)  although the address on adverts they refer to is one of Mountfield’s at Grenfell Place, Maidenhead.

Mountfield were involved in the sale of various machines in the UK, most notably the Wheel Horse garden tractors and the Reo range too. But just as Mountfield marketed these machines here so did others in other countries, for example in France; Fenwick of St.Ouen and also the workshop of Goetzmann based in Lingolsheim near the Geman border. Goetzmann also retailed the Jacobsen ride-on mowers such as the Jacobsen Chief. The image below shows two French adverts.

It should be noted that from about 1968 to 1982  G. D. Mountfield were involved in  a factory in Troisvierges, Luxembourg (source1) , (source2) making their lawnmowers – potentially making Mountfield a widespread company that probably pulled in merchandise and components from across the world.  The Troisvierges factory was not too far, approximately 120 miles away, from where European Wheel Horse tractors were assembled in Belgium that  Power Gardening (Slough) Ltd distributed.

Through the decades Mountfield appear to have dabbled in the advertising world by changing their adverts rather frequently although 1967 when advertising agents Robinson Scotland and Partners took over was a year when several adverts for different machines were consistent. Here is a short selection of different small-sized adverts that we have for Mountfield showing just a few of the machines they retailed, although their machinery range was vast. These adverts span fourteen years from 1965 to 1979: