We’re on a mission to find the best garden centres in the UK and we’d like your help
Lockdown has rekindled our love affairs with many simple pleasures: reading, baking bread, drawing… but perhaps the simple thing that made the biggest difference was gardening, and not just gardening, but very specifically the joy of a trip to the garden centre.
A peculiarly but very jolly British institution, garden centres remained open for most of lockdown and, as the nation has once again begun tinkering with houseplants, tidying borders, planting up veg patches and eyeing up more ambitious plans such as willow teepees and outdoor bars, garden centres have been there to provide. In fact, so keen were we to get out in the garden, that during April 2020 there were more Google searches on when garden centres would reopen than on what was happening with school closures.
And little wonder. For a long time (not lonly during lockdown), garden centres have been our happy place. Memories of childhood Sundays spent walking the long aisles behind our parents, fingering geranium leaves and enjoying the unmistakable smell of compost remind us of a simpler time, when garden centres were exciting for being the only thing open on a Sunday.
Our childhood selves would froth with excitement, though, at the wondrous things on offer at a garden centre these days. Many small chains and independent garden centres have become destinations in themselves, with brilliant cafes and restaurants (that we can’t wait to sample once again soon) offering homecooked meals that outstrip many a local pub; farm shops stocked with jars and sacks of local produce; stores selling artisan beers and wines, crafted gifts and covetable clothes (gone are the days when you were impressed to see a pair of green wellies and a Barbour in a garden centre). Many have even become hubs for creativity and outdoorsiness, putting on workshops and courses for the green-fingered and gardening wannabes alike.
We’ve always been excited to find a Really Good Garden Centre to visit, and we think we should all be sharing that knowledge with each other. So, we’re asking you to send us your recommendations and we’ll put together a Simple Things Guide to Really Good Garden Centres across the UK. Tell us about the RGGCs near you - the ones that have fabulous selections of plants as well as tool shops you can get lost in, yes. But also the ones that always did the best coffee, had the most useful shops and the prettiest views from their cafes. And also those with the most helpful and knowledgeable staff and the ones that run excellent clubs and workshops. We want to pinpoint the garden centres that are an oasis of green in cities, and also those that have over the yearsbecome busy hubs and a place to meet within rural communities.
You can comment in the box below or on our Really Good Garden Centre posts on Facebook and Instagram. We’ll collate the results and share them with you at a later date, so that as the world opens up again, we can all make the most of them, and say a bit of a thank you to these places that became little beacons of hope for many of us in the last year.
