Deborah's Gardening Tour

Welcome to my website where I share my excitement about gardens and garden centers that I have visited.

As a Master Gardener living in Virginia Beach, Virginia I enjoy the fellowship provided by other gardeners in this region blessed with great environment for growing plants.

My fascination with garden centers developed from a class at Tidewater Community College (TCC) in Chesapeake, Virginia. We were required to critique local garden centers, taking into account various aspects of operating this type of business: sales and marketing, customer retention and growth, product mix, and so forth.  Curiously, my current occupation in customer service and sales for a major insurance company provided me with some helpful insights into the essential facets of business operation. Combined with my lifelong enjoyment of gardening, the business aspects of gardening has opened a new dimension of interest for me.

Purpose

This website focuses on my experiences gained during vacations to the Northwest region of Britain where I visited several gardens and garden centres. I was so impressed that I wanted to share these experiences with others who appreciate the British approach to plants and landscaping.

Another primary purpose for doing this project is to continue learning about garden centers as businesses that fulfill, to some extent other, a need for the local gardeners that they serve. This may be include sharing the information with other students who are taking classes on these subjects or those who wish to prepare themselves for a career in this field.

Method

For each garden center that I critique on this site, I have used the same method that I utilized in the Nursery and Garden Center Management class that I took at TCC.  The bulleted items under each heading are the sorts of things that make or break a business, especially in the very competitive field of gardening centers.  Students should find this highly structured method helpful, especially if they are taking the same class that I took.  (HOVER HERE for Method details.)

One of the limitations of my brief survey of gardens and centers is accessibility by the public transportation system. We utilized an eight-day Britrail train pass combined with frequent bus rides and walks to get to each facility. If we had used an automobile, the list would probably have been different, because we passed on a couple of nice-looking garden centers simply because the cab fare would have been excessive for our purposes.

Since all of the centers that I visited have websites with travel directions, hours of operation, etc., I will not be repeating that information for each site.

2009 Update

In 2007 my husband and I spent two weeks visiting our daughter in Manchester, which served as the base for our daily excursions to gardens and centers in that area. From this initial trip I created this website to share the details of my visit.

In September of 2009 David and I took another trip to Manchester. Economic conditions, on the downside, had occurred since our visit to garden centres in 2007, and had impacted several of those businesses. Brookside Garden Centre, after experiencing financial difficulties, was acquired by the Klondyke Group in December 2008. The popular miniature railroad cars still run the track around the centre. The Icelandic Bauger Group, which acquired approximately 100 garden centres under the Wyevale name in 2006, filed for bankruptcy in February 2009. Wyevale is now under the name of The Garden Centre Group.

Several other centres expanded their business. Poplar Tree increased the size of their restaurant and opened a food hall and farm shop. Bents had added a Local Food Hall and has ambitious expansion and remodeling plans for the centre. We stopped at Hayes Garden World in the Lake District. We found the centre at the start of major renovations that are to take place over the next three years. Larch Cottage Nursery renovated their restaurant with a new outdoor seating area - with a view. After 25 years in business, Peter Stott is still creatively crafting his nursery. He has been years ahead of a new marketing plan in the UK, as his reputation had long been established for growing, promoting, and selling UK plants.

In the spring of 2009 a new marketing campaign was launched in the UK. Market research had found that over 90% of gardeners would be more likely to buy plants that they knew were grown in Britain. The consumer would be persuaded by the benefits of buying local to support local growers and the economy of that area, environmental benefits, and fresh, healthy plants free from imported insects and diseases. Early test markets were considered successful with percentage of sales higher for Home Grown branded plants. A prominent logo indicating “Home Grown, ” was designated indicating plants that were raised from seed, grafted or produced from cuttings at British nurseries. The four garden centres I visited, participated in this marketing campaign.

I have added to my site reviews four garden centres visited in September of 2009: The Camden Garden Centre and North One Garden Centre in the London Bourough’s, Grosvenor Garden Centre, near Chester and All And One Garden Centre Middleton, Manchester.

Photos

Photos provide graphic documentation of my tour. You can view some of the best in the Flash slideshow at the top right of each page.  Visit the Photo Archive for the full photo collection that includes a couple of sections on some lovely plant displays (Containers and Home Gardens) not covered in the written reviews.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the numerous people who provided much needed direction and assistance on our travels. The British people were so friendly and helpful, making our travels so much more enjoyable and efficient. Francis Davenport and her husband John of Holehird gardens were particularly supportive during our day trip to that amazing garden.

I wish to thank Beryl Henderson, owner of North One Garden Center and Rod Slater, Managing Director of All In One Garden Centre, for taking time to talk with me on my visit to those garden centres.

Also, much thanks to my husband David for his assistance with travel arrangements, photography, and web design.

Contact Information

If you wish to provide feedback or ask questions, email me at: debbieknit@cox.net

The format and structure of my critiques of the various garden centers include the following categories with parenthetical descriptions:

  • Structure (physical building and related structures)
  • Access (easy to find, easy to get to, how to get to, disabled)
  • Traffic Flow (interior layout)
  • Appearance (condition, new or old, clean or dirty, attractive or ugly)
  • Environment (music, shopping environment, ambiance, color, floor covering)
  • Seasonal Merchandise (Christmas, Halloween, Easter, etc)
  • Structures (conservatories, working greenhouses, garden sheds, etc)
  • Landscaping/Hardscaping (pavers, concrete blocks, fencing, etc)
  • Stoneware (pots, statues, garden ornaments, sundials, birdbaths, etc)