When did garden centres become such big business, a destination in their own right? I suspect that they have been for years and it’s me that’s behind the curve … the pandemic can only have helped their cause over the last 18 months or so.
The Brainy One and I are not naturally green-fingered, but we both enjoy a pretty garden and I’ve become fairly adept at keeping plants in my small container garden alive. The majority of the things I grew or planted during the first lockdown last year are still alive.
The garden centre that we’ve been visiting most this year is near to where my Sister-in-Love lives. Alongside 3 acres of plants, there’s a delicious café, a shop selling lots of lovely things you never knew you needed, a garden club, a small playground, outdoor cinema and theatre … and it’s super dog-friendly. 🙂
Sometimes we just have a cuppa, sometimes we have brunch or lunch, sometimes I actually might buy a few wee plants for the small beds under our front windows and sometimes I fantasize about a ‘home office’ that would be considerably bigger than our garden shed. 🙂
How about you? Are you a fan of garden centres? Do you have a lot of outside space?
This West London Life 
Your garden centre sounds wonderful. Well done you keeping your plants alive, you are maybe developing a green thumb after all. Of the 3-4 fairly close large garden centres near us, do not have shops or cafes. Right now the attitude is limited browsing, get in, buy, get out. (lol). But in pre-pandemic times, I could wander about for hours & dream about developing gardens that host all that take my fancy. I do have a fairly large garden of mostly perennials but use pots of annuals to fill in pre-bloom or post bloom. This year in pots on the patio I have pots of Basil & Rosemary along with the cheerful long blooming annuals.
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I spoke too soon, as I’ve just noticed that one of the bedding plants is looking rather dead … 😦
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