Garden Centres close their doors "We want to be part of stopping the spread of Coronavirus" No 1 Most Read Story 2020 - From GTN Xtra - Issue 12 2020
It's been a sanguine day in the GTN Xtra office as notification after notification has come in from garden centres who have taken the huge decision to close their doors either at the start of today or as business closes tonight/tomorrow.
At Perrywood, Simon Bourne said "It was a decision based purely on social conscious. We want to be part of stopping the spread of the Coronavirus rather than possibly contributing to the passing on.
"At the weekend too many customers were using the centre as a place to be rather than just a place to shop and staff were getting increasingly nervous," he added.
The list of centres to announce closures either today or at the end of tomorrow includes:
Aylett Nurseries
Barton Grange
Baytree
Ben Reid
British Garden Centres
Burston
Caulders
Cranswick
Downtown
Klondyke
Knights Nags Hall & Betchworth
Millbrook
Palmers
Perrywood
Planters
Poplars
Rosebank
Silverbirch
Squires
Stewarts
Sunnyside
Sunshine
The Old Orchard
Torwood
Trowell
Waterside
Webbs
As I write this update, many more centres are staying open and promoting gardening for kids and arranging deliveries, but they are also planning for the future and a possible lockdown instruction from the government.
Please do use the comments link below to add your thoughts and ideas. Or e-mail me: trevor.pfeiffer@tgcmc.co.uk.
At Hillier we could see the inevitable direction of travel of coronavirus as Christmas approached and considering the extraordinary effort that our teams had put into keeping our centres open this year. Therefore for the safety of both our customer and teams we took the decision on Monday 21st to close on Christmas Eve and not reopen until Saturday 2nd January at the earliest. I have been amazed at the incredible response and received more emails than ever before from our customers supporting our decision. We are of course very keen to open as soon as the time is right, and our teams well rested, to ensure gardeners can stock up on the essential products that will get them out into their gardens and continue to assure everyone benefits from the mental well being that being out in the garden brings to all.
Chris Francis