Scotland and N.Ireland winners unveiled

We revealed our Scottish and Northern Irish regional winners at a presentation recently at Creative Gardens Galgorm Castle.

Simpsons Garden Centre was awarded Best Garden Centre in the Destination Garden Centre category (DGC) and Garden Wise – Dumfries won in the Garden Centre category (GC) in Scotland. Creative Gardens Donaghadee scooped Best Garden Centre (GC) in Northern Ireland.

We had a fantastic evening at the presentation of the Scottish and Northern Irish area awards and we would like to say a huge thank you to Creative Gardens Galgorm Castle for being the hosts for the evening.

Each garden centre was inspected earlier in the year and GCA Inspector Roger Crookes presented his findings, highlighting best practice and new ideas as well as revealing the area winners in the two categories: Destination Garden Centre (DGC) and Garden Centre (GC) for each of the areas.

The top scoring centres overall, nationally, in both the Destination Garden Centre and Garden Centre categories will be re-inspected before the titles of Garden Centre of the Year and Destination Garden Centre of the Year are announced at our annual conference taking place in January 2017.

The full results for the Scotland and Northern Ireland GCA area awards are as follows for the GC and DGC categories:

Scotland:

• Best Garden Centre: Simpsons Garden Centre (DGC) and Garden Wise – Dumfries (GC)
• Best Creativity and Innovation: Simpsons Garden Centre
• Most Improved: Caulders Garden Centre Erskine
• Best Customer Service: Simpsons Garden Centre
• Garden Products Retailer: Raemoir Garden Centre (DGC) and Garden Wise – Dumfries (GC)
• Best Garden Centre Restaurant: Simpsons Garden Centre (DGC) and Raemoir Garden Centre (DGC) and Mains of Drum (GC) and Glendoick Garden Centre (GC)
• Best Outdoor Living: Raemoir Garden Centre (DGC) and Gouldings Garden Centre (GC)
• Best Indoor Lifestyle Retailer: Raemoir Garden Centre (DGC) and Glendoick Garden Centre (GC)
• Best Environment and Community: Garden Wise – Dumfries.

Northern Ireland:

• Best Garden Centre: Creative Gardens Donaghadee (GC)
• Best Creativity and Innovation: Creative Gardens Donaghadee (GC)
• Most Improved: Creative Gardens Galgorm Castle (GC)
• Best Customer Service: Creative Gardens Donaghadee (GC)
• Garden Products Retailer: Creative Gardens Donaghadee (GC)
• Best Garden Centre Restaurant: Creative Gardens Galgorm Castle (GC)
• Best Outdoor Living: Creative Gardens Donaghadee (GC)
• Best Indoor Lifestyle Retailer: Creative Gardens Donaghadee (GC)
• Best Environment and Community: Creative Gardens Donaghadee (GC).

We’re stepping up our search for new inspectors

We’re stepping up our hunt for three new inspectors to help our members retain the very highest of standards in service and expertise.

The search has started in earnest following the announcement recently that Alyson Haywood, Andy Campbell and Ian Boardman were standing down from their roles this year.

We’re now very keen to hear from anyone who would like to work with us and shares our vision, and that of our member garden centres, with regards providing the very best in customer service and care, as well as offering top quality advice and plants and products.

We’re beginning the task to look for replacements now and have already received a number of expressions of interest. We will be contacting them shortly but we would still love to speak to anyone else interested in the posts from all areas of the industry. Anyone wishing to find out more about the role, should contact me via email at the GCA so they can ensure we get full details sent out to them.

We wish to continue the good work carried out by our team of inspectors, helping to ensure consistency and raising standards throughout our membership. We view this very much as an opportunity to ensure that we have a capable team of inspectors who have insight into the market and new retailing ideas to help our members develop and face the challenges of the future in a positive way.

The main purpose of the role of inspector is to visit member’s sites to assess standards and give feedback.

Our ideal candidates will need to visit member centres during the spring inspection window and be able to give objective and honest feedback on what they find.

They will need to produce reports and provide ideas for improving standards. They will also be required to make presentations at our annual conference and regional meetings. It is a very interesting and unique role for anyone in the industry and we hope to hear from lots of potential candidates. 

For further information about the role of inspector at the GCA, please call 0118 930 8918. Alternatively, please visit www.gca.org.uk, log on to www.facebook.com/pages/Garden-Centre-Association or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/GC_Association.

GCA Plant Area Workshop success at Ball Colegrave

We held a successful Plant Area Workshop at Ball Colegrave this summer (2016).

The event was attended by plant area managers, buyers and supervisors and was facilitated by GCA inspector, Roger Crookes.

Our Plant Area Workshop was a big hit with the delegates. We’d like to thank all the participants including Roger and our hosts Ball Colegrave for their enthusiasm on the day. We all found the experience highly motivational.

Attendees included a mixture of plant area staff and managers from member garden centres, some with decades of experience and others quite new to the challenges and opportunities.

Roger explained: “Actually the less experienced delegates helped us develop one of the key themes of the day – how do we successfully engage less experienced, less confident, younger customers?

“The discussion groups seemed to work really well, demonstrating the usual GCA friendly openness and generated numerous ideas and observations around key opportunities for increased sales of plants, improved linked selling and ‘recipe retailing’, sub-categorising, simple signage, using ‘living labels’ and developing a unique strength or specialism for each plant area.”

Participants we also given the chance to view the displays of plants in the Ball Colegrave summer showcase.

Roger added: “The displays and discussion were truly inspirational. Most encouraging for me was to see all the action plans being generated for each delegate to take back their garden centre, but also a whole raft of ideas and suggestions for how the GCA could further develop the Plant Area Forum in the future as it keeps plants at the heart of its focus.”