The first things customers see when they enter the Theatre Café are plates of glorious cakes and pastries, all made on the premises to French patisserie standard by trained patissiere Alton Rudd, who used to work in a popular local hotel.

Alton’s ingredients are kept in jars on view behind the counter, where customers can see him at work in his bakery. “If you’re making something special, put it on show,” says Alan Roper. “I know we’re not the only garden centre to put the bakery on view but I think we do it well here. We’ve given it a country farmhouse personality with bespoke counter units in Farrow & Ball colours, and all the plates and cups and saucers are different, like a traditional English tea room.

The ‘Coffee and Cake Mezze’ deal is just the thing when you can't choose between the delights on offer. You get taster-size pieces of cake on a tiered plate so youcan try them all.

Alan Roper was keen from the outset to get the coffee right. It’s 100 per cent arabica and ground to a precise granule size for best results.

“Personally, I got tired of cappuccinos and lattes and drinking coffee that was 95 per cent milk and 5 per cent water. I wanted 95 per cent water and 5 per cent milk, which also gives me more margin, but mostly I wanted to get back to what I remembered in the 70s. My mother always had a percolator on the go and a coffee pot on the table when we had people around. So that’s why we’ve got so many coffee pots at Redfields – I went out and bought them myself from John Lewis!”

Little about the Theatre Café cake counter fits a conventional template, not even the obligatory menu blackboards. Here, the chalk boards are French grey. And there’s not a plastic milk dispenser in sight – they’re hidden inside some modified milk churns Roper acquired in Guernsey, where he and his family live, near Blue Diamond’s HQ.