The 2024 GCA conference got off to a peat-free start with around 60 delegates getting a behind-the-scenes tour of Melcourt’s site in Tetbury.

After learning about the raw ingredients for Melcourt’s professional and retail growing media, delegates saw specialist machinery in action bagging and palleting the bags ready for despatch.  To help maintain quality for gardeners, Melcourt has started to print the date of production on its bags, recommending product is used with 12 months to ensure the best plant performance.

Old Railway Line was the lucky recipient in a generous prize draw winning a pallet of 50 bags of Melcourt growing media. The garden centre is not currently a stockist so this will be great test to see if Old Railway Line customers like the new offering.

Next stop was a tour of Ramsbury Distillery in Wiltshire, maker of vodka, gin and beer. On its 19,000 acres it grows everything, apart from hops, that it needs and is one of only five distilleries in the country producing single estate vodka and gin. With sustainability at the fore, it is currently working towards BCorp certification and hopes that within three years it will also be adding its own whiskey to its shelves.

In the distilleries events space, it was competition time with the Cabbages and Pansies going head to head in a quiz with Guy Topping as quiz master. Congratulations to the associates (Cabbages) who took the prize with 41 points versus a close 39. The real winners of the night however, were the three charities being supported at the GCA conference this year which are Greenfingers, Perennial and The Colegrave Seabrook Foundation. Fundraising got off to a great start with £3000 from the evening’s entertainments which will be added to over the next two days.

A big shout also has to go out to Weber for its platters of flamed cooked food accompanied with a delicious slaw and bbq’d apple pie.