Why the garden centre – and its array of life – is our happy place, but what is your garden personality?
As a child in the 1970s, when a typical Sunday lasted around eight hundred years, a great highlight to break the tedium between breakfast, hasty homework and bed, was a trip to the garden centre. Then, aside from churches and ruins and the local military museum, it was one of the few places open. When my mother couldn’t stand being confined to the house a minute longer, she would load us into the car and off we would go. The small, slightly shabby local nursery, with its glasshouses and seed trays, hessian-sacked shrubs and bags of compost, represented more than gardening to me, but freedom.
It is this sense of escape carried on the spicy green scent of pelargonium leaves that made me fall in love with gardening. And it also gave me a sense of power. From the moment I was given a handkerchief-sized square of the garden and my first packets of seeds (carrots, radishes and marigolds), it felt like a miracle to me that these tiny specks of dirt could turn into something so recognisably, solidly beautiful if I just took care of them. That is a mighty life lesson for a five-year-old.
To this day, the nearest garden centre – or stately with a plant shop attached – is still one of the first things I look up when I visit a new place. A couple of years ago, an outdoorsy relative was visibly horrified to learn that I had come all the way to the Lake District but would prefer an afternoon mooching around the local garden centre to heffing up a mountain in the rain. Garden centres are just enough outside for me. And I have so missed them.
It is with enormous green-fingered glee that I greet the reopening of gardening centres this week. Like so many other plantaholics, I have been getting up early (okay, the crack of nine) to book prime delivery slots with favourite nurseries. Many of them are only taking a limited number of orders a day, so bagging one elevates my mood. I have swapped notes with other keen gardeners on who still has plants for sale and while it has had a certain treasure hunt quality to it, I long to get a scrupulously-disinfected trolley handle between my hands again and weave my way around my local garden centre; beauty with a chance of retail is my favourite mood.
It has been supremely frustrating, in this most beautiful and yet most troubled of springs, not to be able to pop down the road for some new pots, plant food or twine, so I have enormous gratitude to Alan Titchmarsh and others who lobbied the government to reopen nurseries and garden centres. This is not just because gardening has so many proven physical and mental benefits, but because so many small growers were faced with going out of business if they could not begin selling their plants before the end of the month.
And of course, garden centres – being largely outdoors – represent relatively safe retail environments. The precautions with which we have all become so swiftly familiar will be in place: social distancing and limited customers at any one time; cards not cash; cafes and restaurants will not be open. But apart from that, fill your (car) boots. Spring has finally sprung.
A spotters guide: the who’s who of the garden centre crowd
The plantaholic
Has read every garden magazine, watched every episode of Gardener’s World and talks of fashionable gardeners like they are old friends. Knows to plant in drifts, not to have too many single plants, to be disciplined, to edit. But will think about that tomorrow, for today we shop.
Will come out with: One of everything
Mini the moocher
Gazes wistfully at the closed-off café remembering brunches past, as she mooches around the scented candles, tasteful botanical design paper napkins, aprons with Head Gardener stencilled on them, pheasant doormats, and Toile de Jouy wellies.
Will come out with: A plaque saying, “I’m in the garden – don’t fence me in”
Top drawer planter
Generally speaking, there is nothing for them in a normal garden centre. Usually found hunting specialist nurseries for plants so refined they would never dream of doing anything quite so vulgar as flowering, at least not so as you would notice.
Will come out with: You’ve never heard of it
Tool wrangler
There are so many pockets in his waistcoat and trousers it takes him twenty minutes to find his Leatherman pocket knife. Do not get him on the dribble pipe watering system he can operate from his smartphone. Just don’t.
Will come out with: a set of solar speakers in the shape of small boulders
Busy Lizzie
Has the best hanging baskets and window boxes in the close. You certainly can’t get within two metres of them in case the dazzling combination of begonias, fuchsias, pelargoniums and lobelia burns through your retinas. She never met a petunia she didn’t like.
Will come out with: a metal pink flamingo statue
Have you been gardening more during lockdown? Tell us about yours in the comments below and send us your garden transformation pictures to yourstory@telegraph.co.uk. You can also enter our competition for Britain's Best Garden.
