Perrywood Garden Centres has opened its brand new £8.5 million garden centre in Sudbury, Suffolk.  

The purpose-built centre – complete with a 200-seat coffee shop and restaurant – sits just across the driveway from the original garden centre. Local customers have watched it being built for the past year, and the wait is finally over.  

The development is a significant investment for the town, bringing new shopping, dining, and leisure facilities and creating new jobs for the local area. Perrywood has recruited 35 extra team members and plans to continue growing the business.  

What’s inside?  

• 1900 square metres of indoor retail to allow for expanded ranges and bigger departments  
• A spacious outdoor plant area with two canopies  
• A 200-seat restaurant and coffee shop, designed so customers can relax amongst the plants. Table service. App ordering and table bookings will be introduced in the coming weeks.   
• Improved facilities, from a bigger car park with more accessible spaces to family-friendly and accessible toilets.  
• A welcoming team, combining familiar faces with 35 new team members from the local community.  

The team expects turnover to increase by a third in year one, currently at £4.5m. When Perrywood bought the business from Wyevale in 2018, it turned over less than £1m.

The original Perrywood site will not go to waste – plans are already in place to refurbish the old garden centre, with more retail space due to open in 2026.

Perrywood is in talks with several retail partners, but with conversations ongoing, there is still time to express interest by emailing simon@perrywood.co.uk   

“It’s been a huge undertaking and we can fully appreciate why many owners are expanding or operating from older buildings rather than building from scratch, as it’s not for the faint-hearted! Our initial plans were approved in 2021, just before external events sent building and borrowing costs sky high. Planning variations to build on a smaller scale in phase one were approved in 2022, and the build started a year ago,” said Operations Director, Tristan Bourne.

“This is a long-term investment for the future of the business and our family. Moving from owning one garden centre to three has allowed us to operate more efficiently and benefit from economies of scale.”   

Perrywood worked with Pleydell Smithyman to secure planning permission and on the building and restaurant designs.  

• The buildings are from Newspan and Fordingbridge   
• Ground work and building contractor supervision was Ashwell Construction 
• Building fit-out contractor was Phelan Construction 
• Shop fit from Sale Point and Stagecraft  
• Plant benches from Timber Displays and Nostrand