Garden Centre Closures

[Serial_Apologist]

At least two have shut within two miles of where I live - one of them the main Interflora connection, both of them friendly welcoming places offering good selections, and will be hugely missed. I shall be taking a look around to see if others in the district have been shut down since the coronavirus outbreak.

Have outlets in your area been affected in this way?

[cloughie]

At least two have shut within two miles of where I live - one of them the main Interflora connection, both of them friendly welcoming places offering good selections, and will be hugely missed. I shall be taking a look around to see if others in the district have been shut down since the coronavirus outbreak.

Have outlets in your area been affected in this way?

One near us would have done had they not done deliveries when all garden centres had to close back in March.

[oddoneout]

My two local independent garden centres are still open and doing good business. One of them ramped up its associated farm shop side with food deliveries during the shut-down(locally produced flour was a winner as you can imagine), and some limited plant related deliveries.They benefited from some canny ordering and delivery of stocks of compost so were well placed when the official go-ahead came but Homebase in town was still shut. When I went over to see if I could get some a day later the supplier's truck was in the entrance but as much was being sold directly off the back of the truck as was making it to the designated site area. The owner said he'd already had a delivery the previous day which had sold out in the same way.
The other one went over to deliveries and online orders and was in a 'good' position as it is part of a family owned commercial nursery so had some control over stock. It had an arrangement whereby customers could put in advance pre-paid orders from a menu of bedding and container plants to be collected when they were at the right stage. It did become a victim of its own success for a while and had to stop taking orders and doing deliveries as there was too much work for the available staff to cover, but there was limited 'click and collect' of available stock to ensure they didn't shut down completely. They've gained a good few new customers who are also discovering the adjacent small food shop which sells veg grown on site(huge tomato houses, plus salad and field crops) and locally produced meat, dairy and baked goods.

[LMcD]

Our independent pet-shop-cum-garden centre and the local Homebase are both operating as closely to normal as possible.

[ardcarp]

Dreadful joke on Gardeners' QT today,

Q. What do you call a garden centre with several entrances?
A. Variegated

[LMcD]

Dreadful joke on Gardeners' QT today,

Q. What do you call a garden centre with several entrances?
A. Variegated

Excellent!

[gradus]

Pleased to report no closures hereabouts and having just returned from Newquay, none there either.

[Serial_Apologist]

I am now pleased to say that two of the local centres which had closed have now re-opened, limiting opening times to 3 or 4 hours daily, on 4 days of the week, but not the third. I have yet to investigate The Secret Garden, which is beautifully located on the slope which leads down to an enchanting park below the Upper Norwood Sainsburys.

[oddoneout]

Visited my favourite of the two local independent options this afternoon and treated myself a huge pot of flowering sedum which will adorn the back step for the summer. They also had a fresh selection of small alpines(ie not full grown plants before someone gets clever...) just in so I got a couple of lewisias to replace some other plants that are struggling in the hot dry bed beside the patio. Everyone coming in has to have a trolley,which you clean yourself at the door and use the sanitiser, there is a one way system and control on numbers, and children not allowed inside the sales/display area.
The attached farm shop came up trumps with the spuds and toms I wanted. Fresh dug new potatoes, and one of their bargain boxes of assorted frying toms - ones that are getting too ripe, have marks or are misshapen and so can't go to their commercial customers. I now have a selection of huge black russian(8 oz), large plum/paste type(very dense and heavy), lots of green/yellow striped in various sizes and shapes( sweet tasting, somewhat counter-intuitive), yellow in two sizes, an assortment of cherry and baby plum type, and a few ordinary red round ones - two and a half kg for £2-25. The squidgy ones are now bubbling gently into a sauce for tea - the colour is a bit odd as it included a black and several green/yellow, but the taste is lovely.