The Garden Centre Group wins at The Garden Retail Awards 2010

We are delighted to have been announced as winners at The Garden Retail Awards 2010 in the following categories:

The award winning planteria at Bridgemere

Best Planteria
Bridgemere Nursery & Garden World

Bridgemere Nursery & Garden World's new planteria, which is the largest in Europe, has had an overwhelmingly positive response from customers. Run by fanatical plant enthusiasts, it stocks interesting and beautiful plants, new plants with features that make them worth promoting, old varieties which have been unfairly forgotten and uncommon plants which deserve to be more widely known.

The achievements at Bridgemere were recognised by the Garden Centre Association in July 2010, with an award for the 'most improved garden centre in the north west'. The centre was praised for 'investing in and revamping the display gardens, establishing covered walkways and providing good customer services,' amongst other things.




 

Some of our 'Grow Your Own' plots

Community Involvement Award

Since the start of the year we have provided nearly 1,000 Grow Your Own plots. The enthusiasm of all involved has been a pleasure to observe, and the concomitant and burgeoning community spirit is everything for which we could have hoped. There are numerous examples of 'neighbours' going out of their way to help their fellow plot holders.

Tales of generous individuals who have helped their fellow 'GYOers' with weeding, watering, fetching and carrying or just advising the less experienced are legion and amply demonstrate the strong community spirit that has developed in a very short time.

We are also developing our Grow Your Own project on The Garden Centre Group website to indicate where plots are available countrywide, as well as create links between sites to encourage the development of the Grow Your Own community.



 

Ryan Simpson - winner of 'Westland Trainee of the Year'

Westland Trainee of the Year

We are very proud to announce that the Deputy Manager of Pyle Garden Centre Ryan Simpson has been named 'Trainee of the Year' at the 2010 national Garden Retail Awards.

Ryan, who has a Diploma in Horticulture, worked at Fleming Nursery and Bay Road Plants Plus, which are both in Australia. He then moved to the UK and was employed as a Management Trainee at the Royal Horticultural Society's (RHS) Wisley Plant Centre before moving to Wyevale Swansea Garden Centre as a Management Trainee in September 2009 and then Pyle Garden Centre.

It was while he was at Swansea Garden Centre that he was nominated for this Garden Retail Award. He then moved to Pyle Garden Centre in September 2010 to take over as Deputy Manager and has proved himself to be a very hard working employee. He has been extremely committed to his training programme and has exceptional communication skills.


 

Tom Martell, Pippa Hawkins, and Darren J. Mogg - The E-Learning Team

Commitment to Training / Education

The Garden Centre Group's award winning E-Learning system is available to all of our employees across every centre and department within the business. The system enables the company to train its 5000+ workforce in all aspects of the garden centre business from watering and plant care through to specialist subjects such as Grow Your Own. It also teaches everyone best practices for Health & Safety, Office and Admin procedures and Customer Service.

The benefits of the system are that the learning can be done either at work on dedicated training equipment or from home via the internet. By using this system every single employee throughout the group receives the same information and it enables them to work through each training module at their own pace.

For more information on joining The Garden Centre Group and benefitting from our award winning e-learning programme please visit our careers section.