Wasting no time, the GCA kicked off its 2024 conference directly after the AGM where outgoing chair Tammy Woodhouse, handed over the chairmanship to Will Blake of St Peters Garden Centre.

First up, were a deluge of pictures showing inspirational, brilliant ideas and examples of first class customer service and retailing witnessed by GCA Inspectors Alyson Haywood, Gordon Emslie, Phil McCann and Colin Farquhar. Travelling across the country, they visited GCA member garden centres taking around 40,000 pictures from the moment they entered car parks until they left the sites. Some of these images provided great ideas for delegates to adopt at their own stores.

Phil McCann presented an advent calendar of Christmas geniousness from the 40 stores he visited for the Christmas award.  Winners this year are Castle Gardens in the Garden Centre category which embraced sustainability and the environment within its displays and Garsons Esher in the Destination Centre category for its excellent Art of Christmas initiative. His presentation ended with an energetic challenge between Old Railway Line and Cowells, to see who could take the net off a Christmas tree in the quickest time. Won by Old Railway Line, Phil suggests The Great British Net Off could be challenge for garden centres to pick up through social media channels for Christmas 2024.

Alyson Haywood’s summary of the best planteria retailing ended with presentations for the Ruxley Rose awards. Congratulations to Squires Horsham which won the Garden Centre category and Cowells winning in the Destination Garden Centre category.

The five finalists in the Rising Stars competition gave inspirational presentations of their environmental projects. Spanning ideas from educating gardeners about using peat free right through to water wise gardening, it was Haydon Walters who won. Working at BGC Thatcham Garden Centre, his project encouraged 500 children to get involved with planting seeds and seedlings through his workshops during the summer holidays and increased takings in the centre at the same time. This was backed up by his own activity book given free. But watch this space, Haydon is in talks with a major publisher so watch this space as his book could have a bright future.

Guest speaker Josh McBain from Foresight Factory gave a glimpse into the future which will undoubtedly embrace AI to inspire customers to buy, give them more information and more easily find what they want. Although online and in person buying was still very much in evidence there is a trend towards customers appreciating human interactions, which is good news for garden centres, and he suggested they are also looking for multi sensory retail experiences, again another plus for the garden retailing sector.

Rounding up the day and plunging everyone into deep despair about the state of the planet were The Futurenauts, Ed Gillespie and Mark Stevenson.  Thankfully they pulled delegates out of this depression with their enthusiasm on how the garden centre industry was in control of the lever to help make a massive contribution to regenerating Mother Earth.  Collectively, private gardens account for a huge amount of green space in the UK and can make a big difference. By encouraging customers to think of themselves of citizens and to take up composting (especially food waste), the carbon they put back into the soil could change the course of the future.  We should be taking action about regeneration NOT sustainability, as sustaining the current position will not save the planet