Naffed Off with Garden Centres

[SarzWix]

I daresay the Garden Centres were looking for something to earn some money in the season when 'fair-weather gardeners' stopped coming in? I think it started with them selling Christmas trees (sort of gardening related?!).
Ours does a decent job of doing both - the Christmas stuff is all in the section that the annual/bedding plants usually live in, and all the other gardening stuff is in it's usual place.

[Glutton4...]

I'm so glad I bought my Onion sets and Broadies a month ago Maybe I should plant them!

As Simon Bates used to say, on good old Radio One (when it was good!);
'Kick Christmas into December!'

[Nicos]

I remember deciding to buy a small portable BBQ as a Xmas gift a few years ago...I had to phone around and ask the garden centre staff to hunt around in their store room. I did manage to find one eventually!

[OllieMartin]

I went into one of the Beverley garden centres the other day to buy enviromesh and had to stop a lady from setting up plastic Chr*stmas trees to come and help. For the entire time we were searching the place I lightly mocked her for selling decorations.
I can't believe anyone would think "oh, I must nip to the garden centre to get all my tinsel and baubles", the tree perhaps, but not all the decorations. But they must do, otherwise they wouldn't stock so much.

I get cheesed off with the places because they're so expensive. Being a shoe-string gardener I tend to loot Wilko's and Netto for cheap seeds and use voile instead of enviromesh and raid skips for bits of wood!

[ginger ninger]

I wonder if it's the same garden center I go to Bluemoon? Do they by any chance have a butchers at the back and have a farmers markets on the first Sunday in the month? If it is, it's flippin expensive as well. Beautiful Village though.

[organic]

All the big garden centres are the same, more gift centres/restaurants nowadays & from October onwards you have to fight your way past the tinsel to get in! We have Bents not far from us which wins awards for it's Christmas displays & restaurant, not sure if it's ever won anything for it's plants though!

Bents is a nice place the café is cracking (but charging full-price to the death and binning anything left over is both completely stupid on a business level and completely immoral on the "there are loads of people who'll go hungry in this city tonight" level) but on the plants front... hmm. Expensive.

Not only that but (spotted by my eagle-eyed Dad) the roses were absolutely CRAWLING with aphids. nice that they don't just spray everything - but it'd be a bit rubbish to take those back to a relatively aphid-free garden.

[Lovage]

]This nicely illustrates the world of difference between a Nursery and a Garden centre
One nursery near us still has loose seed potatoes, peas, beans and now bulbs.
They sell real Christmas trees in December but very little junk

perhaps we should start a campaign to boycott the garden centres and use the nurseries before we loose them

Does anyone else have a real local nursery they would reccomend??

[piskieinboots]

As Simon Bates used to say, on good old Radio One (when it was good!);
'Kick Christmas into December!'

Most deffo!

I get cheesed off with the places because they're so expensive. Being a shoe-string gardener I tend to loot Wilko's and Netto for cheap seeds and use voile instead of enviromesh and raid skips for bits of wood!

I understand the need for watching the pennies, but this is why they have to diversify I guess - less people going

]....perhaps we should start a campaign to boycott the garden centres and use the nurseries before we loose them

If we, as gardeners, boycotted them then surely there would be none in a very short space of time. I doubt they could survive on just the 'fair weather hanging basket' gardeners

I use a mix of garden centre, nursery, online and magazine offers. Like the rest of you I dislike too much Christmas stuff pre-December, so when in a GC I just walk on passed the glitz and sparkle.

[RedThorn]

My Local GC is selling a giant lit up snowman for £2250 now, like Ollie, and I think a fair few grapes, money doesn't grow on tree's but hey ho, if someone want's to spend that kind of money on a decoration then good luck to them. The profit goes back into my GC at the end of the day and hopefully, they will be more competitive with pricing as they will have covered some of their winter time costs

[hamsterqueen]

There is one near us thatis so bad it has actually had to put up a sign saying " To the Plants" so you donl;t get lost in a maze of hot tubs, model aeroplanes and crystal sculptures

[bluemoon]

I wonder if it's the same garden center I go to Bluemoon? Do they by any chance have a butchers at the back and have a farmers markets on the first Sunday in the month? If it is, it's flippin expensive as well. Beautiful Village though.

That's the one GN. I remember it when it was a bog-standard market garden and they just sold sacks of spuds and horse carrots through a hole they'd hacked in the wall. I have to admit that I'm a sucker for their farmer's markets though.

[OverWyreGrower]

There is one near us thatis so bad it has actually had to put up a sign saying " To the Plants" so you donl;t get lost in a maze of hot tubs, model aeroplanes and crystal sculptures

Our local 'big' garden centre has a hot-tub sales place in it.... I still can't believe that people pay ££££'s for a giant adult paddling pool

[RobintheBobin]

There is one near us thatis so bad it has actually had to put up a sign saying " To the Plants" so you donl;t get lost in a maze of hot tubs, model aeroplanes and crystal sculptures

made me chuckle!

[organic]

Our local 'big' garden centre has a hot-tub sales place in it.... I still can't believe that people pay ££££'s for a giant adult paddling pool

Watch this video from 3:07 to 3:55 (stop at 3:55 if you don't want some rather unpleasant humour - the next bit is very low-brow and really NOT for polite company - the whole part stops at 4:35 - but 3:55 is the end of the good bit)
YouTube - Russell Howard - Live At The Apollo - Part 2 of 2