It is with great sadness that Norma Read, co-founder of Podington Garden Centre, near Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, announces the death of her husband Colin, on 16th June, aged 85.
Colin and Norma established Podington Nurseries in 1971 initially as vegetable-produce growers selling to the wholesale market chains along with a range of own-propagated and traded hedge-plants , the latter being sold via small newspaper advertisements, with hardwood garden plant propagation/potted-from-liners and bedding plant production soon following.
Colin initially helped Norma develop the nursery, whilst also continuing his role as a marketing director for a computer data services company, until leaving that role in what was then a huge leap of faith to join Norma full time during 1976, and successfully applying that year for full planning permission for Podington to become a garden centre…and so Colin and Norma began to convert what was the retail nursery into a fully-fledged garden centre without really knowing, according to Colin, what exactly a “garden centre” actually was.
They soon, however, as is so often the way when creating a business from scratch , through sheer endeavour and hard work, found out. As the nursery-growing unit contracted, traded plants grew along with the rebuild and successive expansions of the indoor-shop areas as the business started to rapidly grow, aided by the induction of Colin and Norma’s sons, Philip and Jonathan, into the company.
Joining Podington into the Garden Centre Association (and the company trading name at that point becoming ‘Podington Garden Centre’) was probably, for both Colin and Norma, the most influential move from which they drew inspiration for the expansion of the centre. That, and perhaps Colin’s “battle cry” for excellence within the garden centre: “Good enough isn’t!”
One of the greatest legacies Colin bestowed on Podington Garden Centre as a very successful independent business was that of his insistence of heavily investing in carefully-selected, customer-facing staff numbers of both motivated and , perhaps above all, inspired staff whom were trained over a considerable period to not only place customers at the front of any priority list, but to make certain each customer went away with at least one piece of very useful, and above all , accurate information , and for customers to realise this was enthusiastically delivered. This, in his view, both supported returning custom without excessive advertisements/promotions, and maintained margins most effectively.
Colin and Norma became regular attendees of garden centre association events and, during the late 90’s and early 00’s, also attended various trips whilst assisting on the UK committee for International GCA trips - the most notable of which was one USA garden centre tour, in August 2001 when during a extremely special visit to the inside of the White House, Washington DC, Colin was the only garden centre tour visitor to get ‘caught short’ within what was an extremely tight schedule and was duly kept under tightest constant-surveillance by two heavily-armed guards without a single second of privacy given.
Right at the end of Colin’s involvement with Podington, he was especially proud to receive, along with Philip and Jonathan, the GCA Best Overall award in the North Thames group for 2014. (Colin pictured bottom centre)
Colin’s retirement years were unfortunately later encumbered with the gradual onset of Parkinson’s disease, and the Read family have asked for any donations to be made to Parkinson’s UK instead of flowers at the service on the 10thJuly , 11.00AM at the Nene Valley Crematorium, Wellingborough.
