Perrywood Garden Centres is celebrating the first anniversary of the opening of its brand new Sudbury Garden Centre, with sales almost doubling, many new jobs created and its 200-seat Coffee Shop & Restaurant proving a huge success.

Twelve months ago, Perrywood opened a brand-new building on the opposite side of its existing garden centre, significantly increasing the space available to customers and introducing a much wider range of departments and products to explore.

A year on, sales have almost doubled compared with the previous year, with the biggest increases coming from the departments that saw the largest increase in floor space.

Home & Gift, including clothing, food and Christmas, has seen particularly strong growth, alongside Outdoor Living, including garden furniture and BBQs.

The expansion has also created many additional jobs, growing Perrywood’s team in Sudbury and providing new employment opportunities locally.

Another major success has been the new 200-seat Coffee Shop & Restaurant, which has quickly become a popular meeting place for the community. The restaurant is regularly at full capacity at lunchtimes, with customers enjoying everything from breakfast, lunch and coffee to afternoon tea.

Simon Bourne, Retail Director, said: “It’s been an incredible first year for Perrywood Sudbury. Building a completely new part of the garden centre was a huge investment, but the response from our customers has been fantastic.

It’s been brilliant to see people enjoying the new spaces and making Perrywood Sudbury part of their regular routine. We’ve also been really pleased to see the growth across the different departments and, of course, the success of the new Coffee Shop & Restaurant.”

The team has also received some fantastic feedback from customers over the past year, including:

• “As regular users of the old cafe we were looking forward to trying the new, and we were not disappointed. Lovely atmosphere, great service and good quality food. Very well organised with plenty of staff, we will be back very soon.”
• “Garden centres are not really my thing, but my wife and I visited the Sudbury Perrywood to look at the Christmas stuff. I headed straight to the coffee shop. I would like to compliment your staff who greeted me at the entrance, it was like a posh hotel in London, getting shown to my table and the lovely young lady even pulled my chair out for me. I will definitely be visiting again next time my wife needs something for the garden.”
• “Wow, come on in and visit. So well worth the wait of the new garden centre. Breathtaking, so gorgeous, so much choice. Well done to the team, wishing them all well and best of luck for the future. Definitely will be returning in the near future.”
• “My favourite garden centre, always choose to come here first. Good quality plants and good options. Very happy with all the plants I’ve bought here so far. Just visited the new garden centre build, great setup, more stock of beautiful plants.”

With the first year under its belt, the Perrywood Sudbury team is looking forward to continuing to develop the garden centre and welcoming customers back for another year of gardening, shopping, eating and events.