Garden Centres - Is It Just Me ?

We decided to go to one of the large chains of garden centres last weekend, looking for some planters for outside.

First observation was that the area formally used for bulbs, tools and garden furniture had been taken over by the general cheap home décor stuff.

Then we came to houseplants - many suffering from the lack of natural light, the rest still on the trolleys from Holland.

Walk past the obligatory restaurant area and pop outside to look at planters that were either cheap and nasty or over priced.

Check out some softwood arbour seats and the yorkshire cry could be heard again …. "how much ??"

I realise that the changes that they are making must be financially beneficial or they wouldn't make them but we have now come to the conclusion that the large garden centres offer us nothing.

Give me a place where they have real plantsmen (and women), lots of greenhouse space to do their own growing and offer healthy, looked after plants.

Have I outgrown chain garden centres or have garden centres evolved into something that doesn't suit my needs ?

 

The biggest problem with large chains is they no longer grow their own plants, this changes their business rates value from producer/retail to pure retail, I will give you some examples.
Where I am, BANES council have a policy of small business that produce a product locally, sell it locally, and under a certain size gave a £0 rating so no business rates are collected, other local authorities do this but not all.
I have a friend who trades in south Gloucestershire, he used to grow his own plants, his business rates where £1250 per month, due to the size of his nursery, he decided 10 years ago to stop growing and buy his plants in,nthis changed his rating to retail only and he now gets charged by the square footage the same as Tesco etc, his business rates at present are just north of £40,000 per annum. In short thats £800 per week, before he buys any stock, pays any staff or utillities. The result is the quality of his plants has dropped, his variety of choice has dropped, his prices continually rise, and he has had to rent out space to other small businesses to help cover the costs, he is not a very large garden centre. God knows what the larger centres like Dobbies etc have to pay, this is why you can now bye plants, pet food, and the kitchen sink at these places.
Unfortunately as a profession Horticulturalists are declining, I see this evey year when I do talks to students at a horticultural collage, the classes are shrinking year on year. So with less horticulturalists about, these large entities are going to have to keep buying in plants, and pass the rising costs on to their customers or close, and we have seen this with the likes of Wyevale garden centres. I like to go into these larger places just to see what they are up to, keep an eye the enemy if you like, last year I went into a larger independant centre run by Whitehall, they were selling a dutch grown pelargonium zonale (geranium) 1 litre pot for £5.99, £5.99, mine imo, were a lot better in quality and were only £2.50, they also only had 4 or 5 varients, I have 32 varients of pelargonium this year, including ivy leaf, and specials like evka and occold shield etc, which you dont see in these places anymore.

 

They have evolved to meet the needs of their customers - and by customers I mean those that pop out to the garden centre on a Sunday to have a look around - but don't buy any plants.

The owner of the garden centre down the road from here has opened up a cafe - it's very profitable - and supports the plant selling side.

 

Interesting insight @Cuttings . By changing the business from grower/seller to importer/seller your friend has less variety, higher prices and stock that is generally not ready for the uk climate / lesser quality stock. They must turn over much more to make the change a viable one.

We had a local nursery who renovated some Victorian greenhouses 25+ years ago and had lots of commercial greenhouse space in the staff area to grow. The Victorian greenhouses are used to display sales stock. 10 years later they knocked down the commercial (growing) greenhouses to build a gift shop and sold out to one of the chains and the whole feel of the place changed, as have the plants and the prices.

We have another nursery that is a similar size but continues to grow a lot of their own plants. Id say that the 'traditional' nursery has more folk going through the till (maybe at a lower margin ?)

 

Pretty much what I'm seeing. Family outing to the chain to look around, take grandma for some fresh air and maybe buy one plant.

Our traditional GC that we use has a café which is always busy and must be profitable.

Maybe I'm jumping the gun and the chains will have much more variety in a few months time. I don't think it helps that I'm usually not looking for mainstream plants.

 

The % margin differs from plant to plant, bedding and basket plants the big stores including diy stores make pennies, the supermarkets have pretty much their plants as loss leaders, perennials have a larger margin, but most entities charge x2.4 of the cost price the extra .4 is to cover the vat.
The big guys make most of their profit buy renting out space, like a coffee shop or resturant, usually they are run by indidual companies, or they know people are coming in for Begonia or geranium, so put then at the back, and make you walk past impulse benching, set out really nice with a pre arranged display of colour, which does make some buy on impulse, this is the bulk of their profit, but they spend lots on points of sale, so they sell more plants, but all you need to do is check the accounts online to see, a typical Dobbies (owned by Tesco) will have a turn over of £8 million, but a net profit of £350,000 (example). A traditional nursery may have a turnover of £100,000, with a net profit of £55,000 (example) so we sell less but our profit margin is a larger % of our turnover. Its purely a numbers game, me I prefer grow more varieties, sell cheaper, sell more of certain varieties, less waste, the waste from some of these larger retail outlets is criminal imo.

 

Interesting. I wonder if they operate Dobbies in the same was as Tesco. Thie initial business model meant that they had sold the items before their suppliers bill was due for payment so they were highly geared.

The CEO from the company I worked at always quoted "turnover is vanity, profit is sanity"

The waste makes me cringe. Our local homebase leave so much stock to die I wonder how they make money

 

I've lost count how many times I've gone in a Garden centre and have come out with nothing. I do have a reasonably good Garden centre ( Gordon riggs in West Yorkshire ) they still grow Veg and bedding but they are slowly creeping the other way, and getting more expensive. And they just put a whooping big cafe right in the middle , they always had temporary small cafes but this one the size of two glasshouse where its would normally be full of seedling / bedding etc .

I can only think of one place nearby that just sells plants and that Dove cottage.

I been looking at going to more plant fairs this year because its normally the same stuff / plants at the GC nothing unusual or different.

 

This is how most of the business is conducted in the plant trade, I could go to Holland today and order 100 dutch trollies of plants, and get 90 or even 120 days before i am invoiced, its why so many go under, the debt rises so quickly as there are no seasons anymore in retail, so its continous.

 

The objective of these larger centres are customer experience, some are very good at it, if you ever get the chance go have a look at Burford gc in oxfordshire, its a loverly place, they have a resturant, two coffee shops, a local produce supermarket, and the largest section for David Austin roses I have seen.but the prices, best to get a second mortgage.

 

I buy my plant feed ect from Wilko, I find this is pounds cheaper than my local garden centre.

 

Be a bit careful, check the NPK levels against more well known brands, it may be considerably weaker, if not bargin.

 

Ooh Ramgate, thats my home town.

 

Just had a quick look at the web site of one of the GC's that I touched on as always having people going through the tills and they seem to have used home growing as their point of difference (as have lots more, I'm sure)

I have no affiliation with this company, just putting it up there as an example of what I prefer (although many will disagree, judging by the popularity of the chains)

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