How much is the garden centre industry worth each year

A.� Although they were nothing like the huge gardening emporiums we find today, records of the first plant retailers go back to the mid-16th century. A certain Mr Child set up a shop in London's Pudding Lane specialising in herb plants, which were much in demand for cooking and medicinal purposes.

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By the early 1700's the first nurseries to actually specialise in selling plants for gardens rather than food started to spring up in the capital, including one called the Vineyard which stood where Olympia is today. It specialised in some of the exotic species that were beginning to be imported from the corners of the expanding British Empire.

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A.� With the advent of the train. In 1864 a Scottish family, the Stewarts moved south to Dorset to enable them to grow a wider range of plants in the more temperate weather. They prospered and soon began lobbying for a railway station to be built nearby at Ferndale so that they could start moving plants across the country. It was built in 1867 and the business went from strength to strength.

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A.� The great Victorian nurseries transformed British gardening. With an expanding empire and the boom of the merchant classes bring back goods from across the globe they spotted the opportunity to introduce a huge range of exciting new plants to British gardens.

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Perhaps the dominant force were the Veitch family and their famous Exeter nursery. In the mid-19th century the Veitchs began employing plant hunters to send around the world collecting new species, including Ernest Wilson. We have the Veitchs and their employees to thank for the first introductions of favourites such as Ceanothus, the Monkey Puzzle Tree, Magnolias and Clematis.

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A.�� We go back to the Stewart family. Inspired by a trip to America in the 1950's, Ted Stewart decided to separate the growing and selling plants. He opened the first garden centre with plants being offered in tin cans rather than being sold barerooted as they were before.

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By the early sixties he had opened a glasshouse full of garden sundries like tools and furniture and the now obligatory coffee shop. The theme was picked up elsewhere and gave birth to the national chains of garden centres we are surrounded with today designed to be a 'retail experience' rather than just a plant nursery, with play areas, restaurants and giant car parks.

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