Now the hard work really begins!
Red letter day on Wednesday this week. We found out we’d been granted change of use permission by the planners, and can now work towards opening our “pocket” Lay of the Land Garden Centre in Spring next year. It will be small, but we’re absolutely determined to make sure it’s perfectly formed. We want it to be a Garden Centre for serious gardeners, as well as an informative and interesting place to visit. We want it to say something about who we are and what we do, so you can expect it to be a little more design focused and individual, than large scale and mass produced. We want to make sure we provide the very best in service and value, really adding something new to the mix of retail businesses in Settle. We’re not setting out to be competition for other businesses in the town, but rather to be complementary. We already have an excellent timber merchants in Timberworks, and a very convenient builders merchant at Settle Coal, and between us we will be able to supply almost anything customers want or need in terms of planning and building gardens. On top of that we have some excellent DIY counters and shops, Ashfield DIY, Timberworks, Practically Everything and a clutch of shops selling seasonal, and popular, bedding plants and both gardening and non gardening goods and gifts. What we don’t have is anywhere really local with a larger selection of plants and garden sundries to complement the existing suppliers filling a part of this space. Inevitably this encourages people to visit the larger towns and stores a car journey away from the town, and that only encourages people to spend their precious money somewhere other than Settle. I’m certain no-one in the business community in Settle wants to see that happen.