Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

Can't even get a coffee in a French garden centre but one I use does have a dog bath. Pay your money and shampoo and shower your dog, just like a launderette.

Some just do plants and pet paraphernalia but some are going increasingly "lifestyle" with outdoor clothing, candles, artisanal foodstuffs and some pretty expensively priced furniture, BBQ, firepits, pergolas and parasols.

 

There are 2 garden centres near me which have full blown restaurants rather than cafes. Both have good reputations for their food, not that I've tried them.

 

Bents G/C has 6 catering outlets with seating for 1200, of which they get roughly 110,000 covers per month. Can remember when we used to supply them with compost when they were mainly growers than retail back then. I think based on turnover, it has the highest turnover for a single G/C in the UK. A large percentage of the plants are still grown on the nurseries adjacent to the G/C.

British Garden Group said of one of their flagship G/C's The restaurant now represents a third of the business income and can easily provide up to 50% of the profit in some months, with the largest gross margin contribution to the business. However, when the restaurant was first installed, its importance to the overall business was not yet fully appreciated. Now, it’s taking over some plant sales spaces. We have a significant power upgrade to be completed and then we will be turning over existing plant sales areas to the restaurant.

 

@gks I remember Bents when they were basically a couple of greenhouses and a shed Back in the 60s, my parents bought a new build near to them and there were several visits to buy plants. As a teenager I was bored out of my mind with it but a “seed” must have been sown

 

I think we supplied them until they went limited. According to my dad, they started off as growers, it would of been the late 60's when they first opened a shop. I think they were one of first G/C's to open a cafe. That seed that was sown has now turned into an annual turnover of £25million.

I can remember when I used deliver compost in the mid 80's, there used be a few G/C's back then that had a cafe, but I would say they were more like a truckers cafe, where a bacon butty or a soup with a mug of tea was more the norm.

 

Perhaps most Garden Centres should just be termed as Garden Cafes

 

Can you get it tumble dried as well?

 

Think they started out as rose growers, probably the (great?) grandparents of the current owners. My first visit would have been in 1968.

 

Dobbies are doing a pup-kin patch, pooches cost £12.50 with humans being free. The pooch can go into the patch for a sniff around and pick a toy. A free hot drink and puppuccino when you pay £3 or more for a slice of cake, our nearest store is fully booked in the 20 slots available. Never mind, anyone who has missed out, can book the Santa Paws instead. I think my dogs are more likely to attack Santa and his elves, let alone play with them.

 

First garden centre I remember around here was in around 1976, I thought it was great, dont think it had a cafe in those days but was all garden and plant related in greenhouses.

Its a DFS now as they shut it down to build houses but somehow DFS got their hands on the land.

 

@gks I'm assuming British Garden Group is the umbrella for British Garden Centres. If so, it seems quite ironic to me that I was describing my experience on my latest visit to one of their places.
When we were leaving, the lady on the till mentioned that we might have noticed a lack of staff on the 'shop floor'. That was because they were all in the warehouse frantically trying to put prices on all the Christmas stuff.

 

I'm trying to think of any garden centers over here that have restaurants The closest to something like that would be the Dutch Mill which has a cafeteria style lunch area but their main business is crafts and novel seasonal things. The retail garden area is not enclosed anywhere and therefore only sells three season's plants. The greenhouses are not open to the public.

What I call a "proper" garden center over here is mostly a big tidy greenhouse and sometimes has a retail area adjacent to it selling , pots, seeds, garden furniture or other seasonal goods.

 

The one I use mostly has only just got a small cafe, it was taken over by a bigger concern a few years ago.
The Cafe is basically a wooden shed fitted out to serve snacks and tea and coffee, so still fairly small and not able to cope with coach parties descending on the place, it's more plant orientated than the big ones, but still pricey, but isn't everything these days.

 

@CanadianLori What you refer to, quite rightly, as a proper garden centre would more often be referred to over in the UK as a nursery garden i.e. one which grows a lot of its own plants. Even the best of the ones locally has given in and has a cafe albeit serving from a converted horse box. It does a lot of trade and I'm sure provides more income per square foot than the display area for pots which previously occupied the space. I have no problem with garden centres/nurseries diversifying, it's those which lose their identity and become department stores that I don't like. Most of the staff don't have a clue about the plants.

 

Agree, but when the core of the business is non gardening, then trading as a G/C is misleading. With being members of the horticultural society, they publish that the horticultural sector is worth nearly £10 billion to the UK, it fails to hight light that horticultural growing in the UK is in decline. So not only are we going to be more dependent on imports for plants, we will be for food also.

As for staff that don't have a knowledge of plants, well I am sure if someone has studied to become a horticulturist, then working for these type of establishments is probably not the type of employment they would be looking for if they had a keen interest in growing. They advertise for horticultural managers and that you must have a knowledge of plants, but the position in general is for retail. There is nothing really in the job description about being in charge of propagating and cultivation of plants.

It is 15.35pm and I have not had one customer today, the bottom line is there is no real future for small independent G/C's and growers going forward. Most would like to sell our businesses as a going concern as we reach, or are in retirement age, but there isn't any real interest coming through from the younger generation. Younger generations are also less likely to inherit a business as a going concern than in the past, which also adds to the decline of small independent businesses.