The Garden Centre Association voted at its AGM today to add a third tier garden centre category for members and to reduce its regions to four.

The vote took place at the organisation’s annual conference in the Cotswolds this morning.

GCA CEO Peter Burks explains: “We have spent a lot of time responding to members comments regarding the difference between being at the higher end of the Garden Centre (GC) category and then moving to the bottom of the Destination Garden Centre (DGC) category.”

The new third group will be known as ‘Local Garden Centre’ (LGC). The DGC and GC sections will remain. Allocation to a specific group will depend on turnover.

“There is a big difference between garden centres at both ends of the previous higher category. By adding in a third tier, we hope that the competition will be evened out. However, having done this, we also realised we needed to amalgamate some areas to ensure there were sufficient numbers in each tier to have a fair competition for every award.”

The GCA has also agreed to reduce the number of geographical regions it has from eight to four.

These will be:

•  North – includes the North West, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and the North East.
•  Midlands, Wales & West – this includes South Wales, Midlands & South West.
•  East – this includes most of the previous GCA North Thames region plus other Easterly areas.
•  South East – this includes most of the previous GCA South Thames Region.