Wyevale garden centres

[andy]

Just popped down to my local Wyevale as it has an aquatic area in and i was horrified at what i saw.

Half of the interior was taken up by christmas decorations, a quater was for interior furnishings and ornaments. There was a section for books and a section for food (snacks etc). In the corner was a "small pet" section and....tucked way over the back was a tiny bit for gardening. There was also a tiny houseplant section.

Now i appreciate gardening is a spring and summer event on the whole but for a "garden centre" to have such a small amount of gardening stuff appalled me.

I know one of the girls who works there and she said they'd just been taken over and a new manager had been bought in....who was a manager at Matalan previously and couldn't tell you which way up a plant went !!! She said the place was a disaster and people were complaining every day and all the knowledgeable staff had left.

Is this the future of our "garden centres"....should the be renamed "seasonal centres"

.....discuss

[Susie Snowdrop]

At MY garden centre/nursery we ONLY sell plants, trees etc and related products. At this time of the year we HAVE to sell xmas trees to keep us going until Spring! I have visited our local larger centres, i.e. Strikes and it is full of everything except garden related products

S

[Cheerypeabrain]

That's shocking...I was pretty peed off last time I went to one of our local ones and found that most of it had been given over to balls and tinsel. Mind you, we've got some good basic nurseries around here too...one of my sisters takes me to GCs a lot but she's flying out to Australia for 6 weeks next Sunday....so that's me until the new year then.

[Plocket]

I don't particularly like Wyevale but they are useful for the basics when my fave garden centres are so far away. However hearing that one is being taken over is usually positive news (one fairly near us was taken over a couple of years ago and it definately improved!) but your one sounds absolutely dreadful. Perhaps they are going to turn it into a Matalan rather than continue as a garden centre!

[piggingardener]

I'm not keen on garden centres at the best of times and prefer to use nurseries and shows for my plants. However, my sister had some garden vouchers to spend so I took her to Wyevales yesterday. It was pretty much as Andy described. Loads and loads of overpriced tat. Christmas stuff, pet stuff, some horrendously overpriced wine glasses, books, expensive cakes, a few sad looking houseplants and very little in the plant line outside except for heathers, pansies, violas and cyclamens. My sister fancied buying an azalia but the few they had were very sad looking and about 4 times the price of those she could buy elsewhere. The pity is that this particular branch of Wyvales used to be an independent and, as far as GCs go, was pretty good. Wyvale took over and refurbished and now it is just cr@p!