Garden centres – ditch the gimmicks and stick to your specialism

My local garden centre is run and staffed by horticulturists, is friendly and helpful to everyone with sound advice, delivers goods conveniently for a low charge, and sells good quality plants and bulbs at the best times. They also have a pets and animal department with feed, bedding and accessories which seems to be a suitable adjunct to the garden centre. They sell a few sweets at the till and have a few garden ornaments and novelties but are not into cakes, calendars, candles, key rings and cuddly toys, But at this time of year a portion of the indoor area is transformed into a grotto where wizened elves and other hideous creatures remind us that the yule tide approacheth. I asked the manager why they felt the need to muck about with such stuff and he said they never did until Tesco, Morrison, etc, started selling seeds, bulbs, compost, spades, wellie boots and all the other garden paraphernalia. So now I don’t mind if the garden centre gets by in the winter months on some tawdry baubles, and they do sell some locally-produced traditional wreaths and garlands, very well-made with real berries, leaves and pinecones. I shall shortly be going there to get some bare-root beech trees for planting out and I might just inspect the festive merchandise on my way round.

Garden centres are changing to meet the popular demands.A cup of coffee and a friendly meal,somewhere to meet up with friends and easy car parking.Play barns for young families,father Xmas and decorations,all alight and so welcoming.A garden centre is now becoming a leisure centre for young and old.Wander thru the planteria on a nice day and be reminded of spring/summer.What a lovely way to spend part of your day.

From the sublime to the down right horrible
I ordered things from two garden centers this week one called koremans ,
was absolutely fantastic , great plants , bulbs and corms , amazingly good prices,
and first rate quality ,all round , quick delivery and well packed ,marvelous !!!!
My second order was very different in fact quite disgusting ,
the web site was , in my opinion , difficult ,and kept timing me out before id
finished my order,
the advice given for the uk weather tolerance for a lot of thier rare plants
was poor ,then ,when I emailed them for help to find a way to buy the things,
I recieved a long winded , rather insulting, unhelpfull email , from a member
of this family business , telling me she had decided to cancel my order , which
insidentally ,according to thier web site had been timed out , before i finished
anyway , however , they had taken my money , confused ??…uhu , me too …I then tried
again to politely ask for help and an explanation , …the reply came back even more insulting than the first , as to my integrity and ability , and saying they had refunded my money ….which insidentaly after a week im still waiting for , but when i mentioned this i recieved yet another very rude email from same young lady !!!! .aparently , it would seem I am incompetant , know nothing about web sites or buying plants .

Oh how i would have dearly loved to mention the name of one of the the biggest and probably most famous , many times chelsea winning , nursery my family used to own 😂😂😂 ……but decided it was time to move on ….back to one of the good ones 🤗

I have wasted such a lot of time and energy in weeding, digging and planting when the plants that I bought proved to be totally unsuitable for the climate in the area in which I both bought and planted them. Garden centres are selling certain plants as perennials but so many either rot in the ground during the winter months or are not frost hardy for the level of frost that they encounter. The cost of them is huge if you have to constantly replace them as you would with annuals. For example, Marguerites rarely survive a winter here and if they do, their condition means that they are rarely worth keeping. Coreopsis rots in the ground as does Monardia. I follow any instructions for soil, care and position. I used to be able to buy these plants in a local plant nursery at about £1 per plant and bought 8 coreopsis and 12 marguerites each year. They grew to full healthy size in my garden in time for their natural flowering season. Now they are sold early as large potted flowering plants at £8 to £9. They suffer from any late cold weather, and end up looking dreadful in comparison to their garden centre appearance. I can not justify their expenditure, so I now buy plug plants and pot them on to grow on my kitchen window ledge. I do not want to garden like this. I am disabled and need an easy life.
In America plants are sold with the appropriate frost level that it can cope with.
Years ago, I used to buy plants from a local nursery that propagated the plants and grew them on before sale. The Garden centres that replaced those nurseries very rarely act as plant nurseries now. They source their plants from remote suppliers and the plants are quite often ‘forced’ and supplied in containers to provide ‘instant’ gardens. Also quite often, large and medium potted plants are pot bound and their roots are often never able to adapt and spread in open ground.
All that being said, a garden centre with all that it offers as a small shopping centre and cafeteria does provide my days out with an easy source of recreation and one stop shopping in a congenial clean atmosphere. I particularly like garden centres with outdoor green areas or lakes with seating for temporary rests from the long walks around the site.