Covid-19
01.02.2021
The Shop and café are both now open as normal, masks to be worn inside the shop and sanitiser is avaliable.
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01.02.2021
The café is open for takeaway, shop and online business as usual with social distancing measures in place.
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26.01.2021
The garden centre and website are open as normal with social distancing measures in place.
Cafe open from 01/2/2021
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05.08.2020
We will be opening the Café for takeaway only from this Friday (7th August 2020). We’ll be doing take-away 9am until 4pm Monday to Saturday, it’ll be one in – one out of the café to order and re-usable mugs are encouraged*.
You can read more on our blog here:JIMMIE WHAT’S TAKING YOU SO LONG?!? (CAFÉ UPDATE)
* Please clean re-usable mugs prior to arrival. We will ask you to remove the lid and leave it on the counter, enabling us to pour without touching it.
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03.07.2020
The garden centre is now open to customers more or less as normal and has been for the last few weeks, although we are limiting customer numbers - please ring the bell at the gate and wait to be invited in. Measures are in place to protect customers and staff.
Unfortunately the café continues to be closed and will not re-open tomorrow. At this moment in time our café is just too small to be able to effectively protect customers and staff. We're still considering how we can re-open in some form, perhaps takeaway, but at the moment were yet to come up with a good solution.
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18.05.2020
Our online store is open for orders; we have been working on this for some time, however, we have rushed this out as a reaction to Covid-19. Initially the website will be setup for local deliveries only, with our own vehicles.
Please bear with us, the website may not be perfect and is missing a lot of items you would normally be able to find in store. However, we have tried to put together a key range of items that you might want at this time of year, and we will continue to add things going forward. If you can find the items you desire online, we would appreciate you purchasing online as this will help free up the phone line, allowing us to serve more customers. However, if you cannot find what you need, please do give us a call or email and we will see what we can do to help you.
When purchasing, our delivery rates do not automatically calculate based on your address, so please select your delivery radius in the delivery type to avoid any delays.
Many thanks for your support, we hope you enjoy our new website, we welcome any feedback.
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12.05.2020 - Taken from the blog
We will be open for limited browsing from Monday 18th of May, by appointment only.
In the meantime we continue serving customers over the phone, email, Facebook, and soon on our website. We will continue to provide local delivery and contactless collection for the foreseeable future.
Why? On Monday the government very quietly announced that garden centres could open. We are concerned about how manageable this will be at the peak of the gardening season whilst maintaining everyone’s safety, but we are also keen to allow those who desperately want to get out, and browse our plants, to do so, and do so safely.
We encourage as many people as possible to use our home delivery and contactless collection services where possible. More detail below:
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Lay of the Land’s response to the easing of Covid - 19 restrictions
The Government has announced garden centres will be allowed to re-open from Wednesday 13th May, provided they can satisfy a set of fairly stringent procedures designed to keep staff and customers alike safe, principally the exercising of social distancing rules at all times. Clearly in the height of gardening season this is going to be difficult to manage for any garden centre. For us here it represents a considerable challenge, given the size and layout of our site.
Most of you will be aware that we have never stopped doing business, and never stopped serving our incredibly loyal customers, having transformed ourselves almost overnight from a principally face to face business to an overwhelmingly remote ordering and delivery model. As many people, particularly those in the vulnerable categories, will still not want to venture out we aim to continue this service. This means that serving customers face to face becomes an additional task for an already stretched and short staffed team.
In line with the Government’s phased approach to easing lockdown, we are therefore proposing a phased approach of our own. The first phase of this will be to welcome customers back into the garden centre with effect from Monday 18th May, but on a strictly limited, and card only payment, basis. The guidance from our trade body, after full consultation with the government, suggests so few people would be allowed in our garden centre at the same time, but with staff required to monitor them, that it is easier for us to say customers will only be allowed in alone, and on a one in/one out basis. Therefore we will be operating an appointment only system, with roughly 20 minutes being allowed between appointments. Whilst we will do our best to ensure pre booked appointments start promptly it will still be necessary to ensure previous customers have vacated the premises, and all customers are asked to respect and understand this.
We would dearly love not to have to make these kinds of decisions, but in the face of a completely new and potentially deadly threat, and if we are serious about the health of our customers and our staff, which of course we are, we don’t really have a choice,. Fortunately, you do; you can still order by phone or e mail and either arrange to collect or ask for delivery (modest charges may be applied). You will be able to shop online, click and collect and you will be able to book appointments to come and look for yourselves. Starting from Monday, in the safest environment we can possibly provide for you, Lay of the Land’s phased re-opening begins.
Thank you for your continued support.
The Lay family and team.
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The garden centre is currently closed to the public but we still have a small team in the garden centre trying to fulfil orders with a free local delivery service.
Please can we ask that people don’t visit the garden centre for the safety of all our customers and staff. Despite shut gates and signs we have had a number of people try and come in, doing so puts both our staff and yourselves at risk!
We are sterilising and disinfecting gates, doors and materials when we go in and out, plenty of hand washing and practising our own social distancing between members of the team.
We are still delivering locally so if there is anything, in particular, required please ring us on 01729 824247, message us on Facebook or email us at mail@layoftheland.co.uk and we will drop it off at your house. Again, can we ask you to be patient, there are only three of us, with one small van and one phone line! We appreciate that everyone is finding solace in their gardens in these times. We aim to be taking orders Monday to Saturday, for the time being, but will not be available on Sundays.