Hi all,
I didn't quite realize the validity of this, but of course it's true. I am always sad realising all the garden centre's are from 2 large companies now. They all have the same general varities. I long for the good old days where a gardencenter had a large collection of strange plants, often bought by the owner at the plants auction, rare ones, large overgrown forgotten ones. In short heavenly for real plant lovers. Nowadays gardencentre's are more about in house design in stead of plants
I think that really has
"hit the nail on the head". Thirty years ago I worked as a nurseryman on what was then the UK's largest chain of Garden Centres.
I naively imagined that we grew plants because they were what people wanted, but I soon found that they were pretty ruthless at getting rid of products (plants) that didn't produce much profit, even if there was still a demand for them.
The company had based their success on realising that the general public were just looking to buy a container plant in flower, and that a
Lavatera × clementii that sold for £2, but cost pennies to produce was many times more likely to sell than a
Hibiscus syriacus that retailed for £5, but cost £2 to produce. It was a
win win situation, you sold a plant with built in obsolescence for a healthy profit, and pretty soon most of the established nurseryman had gone to the wall or were following the same business model.
Since then things have got much worse in the UK, partially because the planning laws are different for shops from garden centres allowing garden centres to bypass many of the regulations that cover other retail outlets, even though they are now
de facto department stores with horticulture as a very minor component of their business.
And the company I worked for? They eventually bit of more than they could chew, and control of the company fell into the hands of property developers who's only interest in the garden centres was in selling them for building land, and why did they want garden centres? Mainly because of the same derogation of planning regulations that had allowed the garden centres to behave as shops.
cheers Darrel