Woof woof! Yes, it’s me again…GTN Newshound…and I’ve got a right old tail-wag on, I can tell you! Y’see, isstry (as we used to call it) was one of my fave subjects at puppy school, always something to get your fireman’s hose into…and this week, what have I got to work on a bit of an isstry project! Exciting,yeah? Like to know more? Then read on …

Sometimes, you’ve just got to listen when a little bird sings, agreed? And this little bird, a sparrow with a limited repertoire, a somewhat cryptic turn of phrase and a huge capacity for long-distance flight, drops a fruity little clue to yours truly about something he’s spotted during a raid on an unattended peanut feeder.

“So?” I say. “Garden centre…,” he says. “New boss man…workers…something happening… frowns… smiles…toilet flushing. Can’t say more…”

“Just a mo,” I say. “You’re not making sense yet. Anything else?

“Hi-Fun,” he says. “Boss man’s name…having Hi-Fun.”

“You’re still not making sense, my old sparra. Where was this, anyway?”

“Scotland…in Derbyshire.”

“But..Scotland’s not in Derbyshire….or even vice versa.”

“Lot of isstry. Tweet tweet…bye-bye.”  And off he flits to the next fat ball.

I’m thinking….garden centre…new boss man…Hi-fun…Scotland…Derbyshire…isstry…a trail as cold as a frozen pie.

But then, but then…Let’s turn the bugle on good old Google and see what turns up.

Garden centres in Scotland…..OK, there’s a pile of em and not one is owned by anyone called Derbyshire. Garden centres in Derbyshire….mmm, that’s a more promising shortlist. So one might be getting a new boss…but where does Scotland fit in?….Oh no…oh yes! Look at this…Scotland Nurseries, Matlock.

And that nice Mr Google tells me that Scotland Nurseries does indeed have a lot of isstry…possibly 300 years of it, even if the evidence is a bit skimpy. Turns out they’ve been growing nursery stock there for 150 years (and potatoes and veggies when there were wars on). They even got a Royal Warrant in 1966 on account of having supplied Balmoral, Sandringham and the Castle of Mey. Twenty years further down the line, two local businessmen turned it into a garden centre, which is run today by one of their descendants, Peter Reynolds, and his wife Yvonne.

Isstry? Luv it!

But there’s still one piece of this puzzle not fitting, isn’t there.

A new boss man called Hi-Fun. Chinese? North American? East Anglian, perhaps? Nope…none of the above. Having hi-fun….of course, cracked it, what took me so long! Not Hi-Fun but hyphen…new boss man’s name has a hyphen.

If it’s who I think it is, he runs a garden centre chain beginning with H and he’s just about to buy his 10^th garden centre.

Thank-you, thank-you! Send the tip to Greenfingers. Woof woof!

Postscript: if the little bird is right, and Wyevale GC end up buying Dobbies, this is how the State of the National Garden Centre chart will look this summer…