Family run garden centre business Creative Gardens is not just re-opening its three award winning garden centres after the Covid lockdown in Northern Ireland but has taken the exciting step of adding a new centre to the group. The Logwood Mill centre, located near Ballyclare, will be known to many as it has been an existing garden centre for many years.
Creative Gardens has been listed alongside 13 other Northern Ireland companies as the one of the most inspirational UK firms with its centres in Donaghadee, Bushmills, Galgorm Castle and now at the former Logwood Mill Garden Centre in Ballyclare.
“It does perhaps seem a strange thing to do given the uncertainly rosed by Covid and Brexit," confessed Jenny, the youngest of the Gass Family who own and run the centres. "But the opportunity came along and we couldn’t resist it. Logwood is a long term investment for us and we are confident it will be a huge success."
Jenny added: “My parents started the business close to 40 years ago and my two brothers Philip and Oliver and I are really keen to carry it on to the next level. We just love the changing seasons and the wonderful range of products a garden centre sells represent that so well.
“We spend a huge amount of time and effort presenting our beautiful plants and gardening products to help inspire our customers, we love to create interesting displays and use as much colour as possible with everything that we do,” explains Jenny. “Our coffee shops are places to relax and enjoy delicious homemade food, we make almost everything we sell in our cafes ourselves freshly each day.”
The new centre at Logwood was officially opened on Monday 19th April. “We are so excited to finally be open, we’ve had such great feedback from so many lovely customers already and we look forward to welcoming lots more new customers to our centre over the years to come.”
Creative Gardens now has four stunning centres with huge plant areas and cafes covering much of Northern Ireland’s population, it employs 230 people and expects turnover to exceed £10m in its next financial year.