I went to a not-often visited Garden centre about fifteen miles away to
discover that it had turned into a Wyevale. Nicely laid out, plants looked
healthy, but I was shocked to discover that pots (admittedly, quite big ones)
of Vinca major and all the various vinca minors were selling for no less than
£7.99. I was shocked and didn't buy anything except a herb - for £1.50.

Am I out of touch or is this normal pricing?


Gill Hall

Am I out of touch or is this normal pricing?

Gill Hall

A nursery near us has become very popular by word of mouth - they have rows upon
rows of polytunnels filled with shrubs, summer bedding, hedging etc and these are
about half the price of same at garden centres. However, they do buy in some more
exotic plants from abroad and these seem to be priced similar to those at garden
centres.
I've noticed that as their popularity has increased to the general public their
prices are sliding up gradually though. However, if you want to get good value for
money but choose from a limited range of stock, then nurseries are well worth
visiting. They are almost worth it for the exercise walking around - some of them
are huge!
--
Drakanthus.


(Spam filter: Include the word VB anywhere in the subject line or emails
will never reach me.)

No they r just profiteering from a lot of peoples' laziness or ignorance in
my opinion

The Devil's Advocate I only set the stage, you pull your own strings


Gill Hall wrote:
: I went to a not-often visited Garden centre about fifteen miles away
: to discover that it had turned into a Wyevale. Nicely laid out,
: plants looked healthy, but I was shocked to discover that pots
: (admittedly, quite big ones) of Vinca major and all the various vinca
: minors were selling for no less than £7.99. I was shocked and didn't
: buy anything except a herb - for £1.50.
:
: Am I out of touch or is this normal pricing?
:
:
: Gill Hall

in article , Gill Hall at
ojunk wrote on 13/4/03 12:51 am:

I went to a not-often visited Garden centre about fifteen miles away to
discover that it had turned into a Wyevale. Nicely laid out, plants looked
healthy, but I was shocked to discover that pots (admittedly, quite big ones)
of Vinca major and all the various vinca minors were selling for no less than
£7.99. I was shocked and didn't buy anything except a herb - for £1.50.

Am I out of touch or is this normal pricing?

A one litre pot of Vinca here is £1.85! A 3l. one would be about £3.00.
Herbs in 9cm pots are £1.00. *Everything* from bedding to fuchsias in a 7cm
pot is 75p, with the exception of ivy leaf geraniums which are (I think!)
£1.10. 9 sweetpea plants in a 'long tom' are £1.50.
But garden centres spend a small fortune on developing their sales areas,
indoor attractions etc. and they *have* to repay those debts somehow. It's
up to the customer to remember that they're not just buying a plant, they're
paying for acres of roofing or tarmac and then decide if they want to do
that!
One gc near here was recently taken over by a French company and literally
millions has been spent on it. According to one customer of ours, a bamboo
he bought from us for £30 is being sold for them at the same size for £100!
Another garden centre not far from us has also spent over a million on
'improvements'. It's now quite hard to find the plants for the plethora of
'stuff' unrelated to gardening but one customer who managed it told us that
they were charging precisely double what we were charging for a particular
rose and others have commented that their prices have gone up in the most
eye-watering fashion. Nurseries - mostly - don't have those heavy debts but
nor do they charge the heavy prices.
--
Sacha

--
"Sacha" wrote in message
...
in article , Gill Hall at
ojunk wrote on 13/4/03 12:51 am:

I went to a not-often visited Garden centre about fifteen miles away to
discover that it had turned into a Wyevale. Nicely laid out, plants
looked
healthy, but I was shocked to discover that pots (admittedly, quite big
ones)
of Vinca major and all the various vinca minors were selling for no less
than
£7.99. I was shocked and didn't buy anything except a herb - for £1.50.

Am I out of touch or is this normal pricing?

It's not just the pricing. Fairly near me (several years ago) was an
excellent nursery. I went there to buy some soft fruit bushes, thought I
knew what I wanted. However I was faced with twenty questions, came away
with different varieties than I set out to buy.
They were wonderful, none died and all thrived. You go there now that it is
a garden centre and if you ask the staff any questions about "best variety"
they look at you as though you are mad, or from candid camera. Anyway they
will probably only have one variety anyway.
Cheers
John T

On 12 Apr 2003 23:51:50 GMT, ojunk (Gill Hall) wrote:

I went to a not-often visited Garden centre about fifteen miles away to
discover that it had turned into a Wyevale. Nicely laid out, plants looked
healthy, but I was shocked to discover that pots (admittedly, quite big ones)
of Vinca major and all the various vinca minors were selling for no less than
£7.99. I was shocked and didn't buy anything except a herb - for £1.50.

Am I out of touch or is this normal pricing?

I've just recently taken over the web hosting for a local nursery,
they do 5 different varieties of Vinca minor for £1.00 each for rooted
divisions.
http://www.babytrees.co.uk/

--
Regards, Paul Herber, Paul Herber Systems Ltd.
http://www.pherber.com/
Diacrit 2002 - Unicode version now available
SanDriLa - SDL/MSC application for Visio
email address is spam-trapped - s/*@/paul@/

A few years ago Wyevale took over 5 garden centres which they then
refurbished at an average cost of £1.5 million.......
And you ask why they are more expensive than your local nursery?

--
David Hill
Abacus Nurseries
www.abacus-nurseries.co.uk

Recently, Gill Hall uttered:

I went to a not-often visited Garden centre about fifteen miles away to
discover that it had turned into a Wyevale. Nicely laid out, plants looked
healthy, but I was shocked to discover that pots (admittedly, quite big ones)
of Vinca major and all the various vinca minors were selling for no less than
£7.99. I was shocked and didn't buy anything except a herb - for £1.50.

Am I out of touch or is this normal pricing?


Gill Hall

The most annoying thing about big modern "garden" centres is all the "tat"
that you have to wade through to find the plants. We stick to our small
local nurseries, then we can find what we want, and that doesn't include
£800 garden tables or £250 stone lions.... or £9.50 for three pathetic
pansys as spotted in our nearest big Garden Center by a neighbour.
--
\\(º`¿´º)//
It's all on http://support.microsoft.com/ somewhere....
If you can be bothered to look for it....

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003 01:06:24 +0100, "david"
wrote:

~A few years ago Wyevale took over 5 garden centres which they then
~refurbished at an average cost of £1.5 million.......
~And you ask why they are more expensive than your local nursery?
~

I went to a Wyevale (Marlow) for the first time 2 weeks ago so see why
they are so popular.

I still have no idea.

Half the displays had no prices on at all, I went through a huge pile
of plastic watering cans with no luck, hardly any staff about to ask
and those that were looked like teenagers with a weekend job, the
prices were silly and they had a huge 2" diameter watering hose
trailing all over the plant area. OK so it was hot that day (Mother's
Day), but it was to my mind against health and safety to have this
trip hazard about, and the only reason it was there in my view is
because the staff wanted to water then and not after closing so they
could get home earlier!!!

I bought nothing. I will not be going back. I have not been to a worse
GC in a long time.

I will stick to my local nursery together with a tucked-away little
non-chain, no awful muzak garden centre and hardware store (!) that
sells everything for practical gardening I can think of, and no
gimmicks. If anyone is in the Chilterns I would be glad to recommend
them both.


--
jane

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone,
you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
Mark Twain

Please remove nospam from replies, thanks!

or £9.50 for three pathetic
pansys as spotted in our nearest big Garden Center by a neighbour.

Gasp. I hereby declare that I shall never darken the doors of a Garden Centre
again and shall make a firm effort to visit Sacha's nursery this year!

Gill Hall

in article , Gill Hall at
ojunk wrote on 14/4/03 10:05 am:

or £9.50 for three pathetic
pansys as spotted in our nearest big Garden Center by a neighbour.

Gasp. I hereby declare that I shall never darken the doors of a Garden Centre
again and shall make a firm effort to visit Sacha's nursery this year!

Gill Hall

Are you near us, Gill?! How nice - be sure to come and say hello, if I'm
not around.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk

Gasp. I hereby declare that I shall never darken the doors of a Garden
Centre

But then again, you can find bargains occasionally. This weekend, I picked
up 2 5-foot tall box plants which had been nicely trained in a spiral ...
for £15. They were £200 each.

If passing, I usually pop in to see what other bargains are in these places
.... but if I was looking for a particular plant, would contact specialist
nurseries.

Best,

- h

The message
from (jane) contains these words:

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003 01:06:24 +0100, "david"
wrote:

~A few years ago Wyevale took over 5 garden centres which they then
~refurbished at an average cost of £1.5 million.......
~And you ask why they are more expensive than your local nursery?
~

I went to a Wyevale (Marlow) for the first time 2 weeks ago so see why
they are so popular.

I still have no idea.

Half the displays had no prices on at all, I went through a huge pile
of plastic watering cans with no luck, hardly any staff about to ask
and those that were looked like teenagers with a weekend job, the
prices were silly and they had a huge 2" diameter watering hose
trailing all over the plant area. OK so it was hot that day (Mother's
Day), but it was to my mind against health and safety to have this
trip hazard about, and the only reason it was there in my view is
because the staff wanted to water then and not after closing so they
could get home earlier!!!

I bought nothing. I will not be going back. I have not been to a worse
GC in a long time.

A Wyevale has opened on my route home from work and I thought it might
be tempting to call in every so often to reward myself after a
particularly gruelling week. The only period when this happened, though,
was when they had a very big range of Clematis - some quite unusual
varieties - for £2.99. They are small and will need growing on until the
autumn but I found them irresistible.

This was completely out of character for them though. I have seen
nothing else which remotely tempted me and the pots are often
distressingly unwatered. It's a good job for me that they're so
unappealing. I ended up buying seven or eight (I daren't count)
Clematis over a two week period. If they normally sold good plants, it
could have presented a serious problem!!

Janet G

Gill Hall wrote:

I went to a not-often visited Garden centre about fifteen miles away to
discover that it had turned into a Wyevale. Nicely laid out, plants looked
healthy, but I was shocked to discover that pots (admittedly, quite big ones)
of Vinca major and all the various vinca minors were selling for no less than
£7.99. I was shocked and didn't buy anything except a herb - for £1.50.

Am I out of touch or is this normal pricing?

For Wyvale yes.. they are one of the BIG commercial chains in the GC
world.. You have to realise that these are the supermarkets of the
Horticultural world. They are interested in making money.

That said I have been to garden to both good and bad as well as cheap
and expensive garden centres and nurseries..

Last time I bought something from wyvale it was on the discounts shelf..
2 pots of rather sad looking minature daffs in pots at 65p each.. They
were for me good value as I know they will come back next year.

What matters to me is the price and quality of plants as well as the
information that goes with it.. I have a few favourite nurseries and
garden centres, but in general there is a lot of overpriced dross out
there with a few jewels amongst it.

Generally I prefer nurseries to garden centres.. You tend to find a lot
of 'saminess' in GC's because they get their plants in bulk from a large
suppliers (ususally). Nurseries tend to have the specialist and
unusual.. Depends what you want really.

My 2p's worth..
//
Jim

What matters to me is the price and quality of plants as well as the
information that goes with it.. I have a few favourite nurseries and
garden centres, but in general there is a lot of overpriced dross out
there with a few jewels amongst it.

Generally I prefer nurseries to garden centres.. You tend to find a lot
of 'saminess' in GC's because they get their plants in bulk from a large
suppliers (ususally). Nurseries tend to have the specialist and
unusual.. Depends what you want really.


I totally agree Jim ;-)

Recently I have bought quite a few plants online...several of them via Ebay
auction.

All the plants have been extremely well packed and good quality. You have
to watch out for those who bump the price with the postage charges but
generally it has enabled me to buy some unusual plants without having to
travel miles ;-)

Natalie