Barton Grange Garden Centre (above) and Whitehall Garden Centre – Whitchurch (below) have been announced as the national winners of the 2019 Garden Centre Association’s annual Christmas competition.
The garden centres were judged to have the best festive displays in the country by the organisation and will receive their awards at its annual conference in January, 2020.
Iain Wylie, GCA Chief Executive, said: “Each year our member’s Christmas displays get better and better and it was an extremely difficult decision to choose the winners this year.
“The entrants were judged on general ambience, creativity, stock range, flow, tidiness and customer service was also taken into consideration.
“We’d like to say a huge congratulations to Barton Grange Garden Centre in Lancashire who won in the Destination Garden Centre (DGC) category and Whitehall Garden Centre – Whitchurch in North Somerset who won in the Garden Centre (GC) category.”
Entrants in the GC category were judged by Andy Campbell and entrants in the DGC category were judged by Alyson Haywood.
David Fawcett-Ropner, Display Manager at Barton Grange Garden Centre, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to have won the title of ‘Best Christmas Displays in the UK’. A lot of planning, time and effort goes into Christmas and it’s great to be rewarded for our team’s hard work!
“One major change we made this year was painting all the shop fit black, this was to make all the colourful decorations stand out and it’s definitely been worth it! We’ve got vibrant rooms such as the vivid pinks found in ‘Flamboyance’, and the neon greens of ‘Tropicana’, but we’ve also got displays focused on the more traditional reds as well as those modern graphite greys.
“There’s something for everyone! We’ve had fab comments from our customers about our displays and received many congratulations for winning this competition, it’s truly fantastic!”
The area winners in the South Thames area were Garsons Garden Centre – Esher (DGC) and Busy Bee Garden Centre (GC). In the Wales and West area Whitehall Garden Centre – Lacock (DGC) and Whitehall Garden Centre – Whitchurch (GC) were chosen.
In North Thames, the area winners were Perrywood Garden Centre – Tiptree (DGC) and Sunshine Garden Centre (GC) while St Peter’s Garden Centre (DGC) and Planters Garden Centre – Bretby (GC) were selected in the Midlands area.
Barton Grange Garden Centre (DGC), pictured above, and Fron Gogh Garden Centre (GC) were selected in the North West and in the North East, Tong Garden Centre (DGC) and Coletta and Tyson Garden Centre (GC) were chosen.
Chris Wilde, Whitehall Garden Centre Manager, said: “We aim to ensure that our customers enjoy the whole festive experience, this makes what we do stand out from the crowd.
“Winning this award is the culmination of months of planning and hard work by the whole team, from the buyers and suppliers, to the team on the shop floor. Every year we focus on seeing what we can do even better than before. We never stop, we think about Christmas 12 months of the year!”
The national winners will be given their awards during the GCA’s annual conference at the Mercure Bristol, Grand Hotel in Bristol from January 26 until 29, 2020. Places can be booked via www.gca.org.uk.
