The magic of Christmas sprinkled over the garden centre industry this week as The Greatest Christmas Awards for 2014 were presented on Sunday evening at the Majestic Hotel, Harrogate.

From conversations the GTN Bestsellers team had during the evening and at the Harrogate Christmas and Gift Fair, it’s clear that where garden centre owners invested in creating a better Christmas experience, not only did they increase footfall, they also saw big increases in festive product sales and restaurant turnover.

GTN Bestsellers analyst Trevor Pfeiffer hosted The Greatest Christmas Awards with HTA chief executive Carol Paris, and he said: “It is at Christmas when teamwork comes through in even more abundance with staff working across departments to deliver magical experiences for young and old and results in trading peaks for garden centre businesses.”

One garden centre that showed teamwork in abundance was Brookside in Kent, who won two awards on the night. Their amazing Santa’s grotto was rewarded with gold alongside Chessington Garden Centre, and they also clinched the Greatest Christmas Garden Centre team. Alison Shead, pictured below with husband Simon, said: “Christmas is special to us at Brookside. We try to get all the staff involved and it pays off because everyone wants to provide our customers with the best Christmas experience. We’re all just big kids really.”

Next week in GTN Xtra: Start of our judges' review of the award-winning garden centres.