In This Issue
Summer bonanza for garden centre sales continues
Face masks from Global Journey are a garden centre bestseller
All time high for July growing media sales
Perrywood partners with Mercury Theatre to host a performance for the plants
Summer plant sales will be better than 2018
GIMA announces virtual Buyer Connect session with British Garden Centres
Eat Out To Help Out at Dobbies
GCA and GIMA join forces to enable better communication between garden centres and suppliers
HTA and Gerald Eve continue to campaign on Scottish garden centres ratings after recent successes
Johnsons Microgreens range gets makeover for new season
DJ Turfcare is set to transform lawncare sales this autumn with new Autumn Lawn Treatment
Whartons Roses – 2020/21 catalogue now available
New plants in HTA Virtual Awards added to Joy of Plants’ library
Merchandiser/ Area representative
Plant Area Manager, Goonhavern Garden Centre, Cornwall.
Get your own copy of GTN Xtra
Strong start to post-lockdown recovery for garden centres according to HTA Market Update
Core garden care drives up sales
Spuds for Christmas double sales
The best of last week's
Pughs cancel their award winning Christmas Grotto for 2020
First UK visitors to Kaemingk showroom after lockdown
Woodlodge acquires Adobe Wholesale and The Garden Foundry
Dobbies and Sainsbury’s launch grocery partnership
No financial support for English plant growers
Garden Centre Photo Tours
Haskins Snowhill re-opens after £15m re-vamp
Bestsellers Top 50 charts every week
Buy your subscription to the GTN Bestsellers printed weekly newsletter
All the latest news from the world of pet products
Lily’s Kitchen unveils revamped dry pet food ranges
PetQuip Awards will recognise industry’s outstanding achievements in an innovative format for 2020
Britain's 10 million dog owners can play lead role in protecting the environment, urges top Uk eco-firm Beco
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Pughs cancel their award winning Christmas Grotto for 2020

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Pughs Garden Centres in South Wales have announced that they will not be running their award winning Christmas Grotto Experience in 2020 and the announcement has been met with hundreds of supportive posts on social media.

 

Roger Crookes, a member of the senior management team at Pughs told GTN Xtra: "We've been talking through how we would run the grotto ever since March and we eventually decided that even if there was no second peak in October we wouldn't be able to do something on the hoof that was up to our usual standards, so it was better to make the hard decision to protect our reputation and announce the cancellation.

 

"The response on social media has been overwhelmingly good and supportive with many pledging allegiance to Pughs for the future and welcoming the decision.

 

"We don't want to offer anything less than we have in the past.  By end of February we had a plan for the grotto and then since the middle of March we have been weighing up all the options; Santa is not a young man, expectations of people having been before along with some measure of risk just didn't add up.  Christmas grottos are such an emotive thing, people get easily upset if its not what expected.

 

"Having made the big decision its been good to see many other ideas to keep Christmas magical start to take shape.  We're convinced we can maintain the commercial affection of our local customers through Christmas into next year."

 

Here's the statement from the Pughs website:

 

Statement Regarding 2020 Christmas Experience


The past few months have been tough for everyone and here at Pugh’s we have tried to keep an enjoyable shopping experience as well as hopefully providing much needed essentials such as food, plants and gardening products to keep people going throughout lock-down at home.

 

Being a seasonal business we plan everything 6 months in advance and usually by now we would be building our Christmas Santa Experience ready for November, so please forgive us for what is deemed by many as a very early post; however, we get regular messages asking when tickets are due to go on sale. We have had many discussions between us and we feel that we have had to make a tough decision on the Christmas Santa Experience in both of our garden centres for this year. It is with a heavy heart that we feel that it would be irresponsible for us to run our experience given the current pandemic situation. This is due to so many unknowns over the next few months and because of the sheer volumes of people that visit us over a short period of time and the way the experience is run in close groups. We feel that offering something small just for the sake of it would firstly not do justice to the experience that we have worked so hard to build upon and secondly not fulfil the demand for the number of people who would want to visit us, so this year we have decided to take a break for everyone’s safety.

 

We put our all into Christmas at Pugh’s and generations of families have visited us year upon year so, within the guidelines, we will endeavour to ensure the most magical shopping experience and focus on creating beautiful displays as always, as well as VIP shopping experiences, sumptuous Christmas goodies in the Food Hall, late night shopping and of course taking our Christmas Tree shopping experience to a whole new wonderful and magical level.

 

We truly believe that even though the Santa Experience will not be running this year, we can still create a Christmas to remember in so many others ways. We want to thank you again for supporting us through what has been such an unprecedented period of time in all of our lives. Pugh’s will remain at the forefront of creating magical memories for many years to come in one way or another and will strive to round off 2020 with the best Christmas yet.

 

We really hope you understand our decision as it was very difficult to know what to do for the best and this was a really tough call to make.

 

Many Thanks,


The Pugh Family

 

See GTN Xtra's gallery of pictures from the Pughs Radyr grotto in 2017, a Gold Award winner in GTN's Greatest Christmas Team Awards.

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