We Made It!

Lay of the Land – Settle’s “pocket” garden centre is up and running and open for business – ish!

After a huge amount of effort from all the family we finally said ok, we better stop saying “not yet” a couple of weeks ago, and even put some signs out saying “Open – ish” in time for Easter weekend.

We’re not finished.  There is still a lot to do to make it all exactly the way we want it, but we’ve been delighted with the feedback from the people who’ve been down to see us so far.  Here are some photographs of how the site was starting to develop in the last couple of weeks before we opened, and soon I’ll upload some photos of what it looks like now.

We are trying hard to assemble a collection of plants to satisfy as wide a taste range as possible, but which will still stand up to our fairly extreme climate at times.  We are using reputable British growers, and have sourced some interesting plants from Scotland, through Lancashire and Yorkshire, to the Midlands and even Norfolk.  I’m being told our  prices are very competitive, if not downright cheap, especially considering the maturity and quality of most of the plants.  In addition we have genuine frost proof pots from Yorkshire Pots (guaranteed 50 years!), as well as an interesting range of stylishly frost resistant pots from Cadix and Yorkshire Pots.  We have cutting tools from Darlac, a little known but wonderfully good value company, as well as great traditional top of the range favourites, like Haws watering cans and Joseph Bentley spades and forks.  We have sprays and fertilizers, a range of composts (3 bags of Murphy’s for a tenner), and various other gifts and sundries.

And we have King’s seeds.  Not a high street brand, but a well respected grower’s favourite, well known to most allotment holders.  According to my friend Denis, the courgette seeds were half the price of those he got from a supermarket, and the packet contained more than twice the number of seeds.  Nuff said?!