125 years of gardening celebrated at Notcutts with launch of new-look garden centre
Notcutts has launched a year of celebrations to mark 125 years of gardening with a special event hosted at its new-look Notcutts Woodbridge Garden Centre in Suffolk. On 11 February, guests, family and Notcutts colleagues joined vice chairman Caroline Notcutt and councillor Sue Bale, Mayor of Woodbridge, for an official ribbon cutting and guided tour around the garden centre, which has recently undergone extensive refurbishment.
Notcutts is a family-owned garden centre group first established by Roger Crompton Notcutt in 1897, and it has since become a leading name in horticulture with 18 garden centres nationwide. While plants and gardening has remained at its core, Notcutts has enhanced the overall experience for customers by investing in spacious new restaurants, and show gardens to inspire gardeners with planting ideas.
Notcutts Woodbridge, which was its first garden centre to open in 1958 on the same Ipswich Road site in Suffolk, has recently undergone a phased modernisation and improvement programme including a new 250-seater restaurant with alfresco dining terrace, and a restored woodland nature walk which will remain a permanent wildlife conservation area for customers to enjoy for free. In recent months, works have also completed on a new entrance area at the front of the garden centre, and two large outdoor canopies where customers can browse and plants can thrive in all weathers.
Speaking at the celebratory event, Caroline Notcutt, great-granddaughter of Notcutts’ founder Roger Crompton Notcutt, says: “It was wonderful to welcome customers, colleagues and friends of Notcutts to join the official opening of our new-look Woodbridge garden centre and to launch our special year of anniversary celebrations. It is inspiring to realise how much Notcutts has grown and diversified over the past 125 years, while our passion for gardening and expertise has remained at the heart of all we do. In this celebratory year, I’m excited to look to the future of Notcutts and how we can continue to inspire the next generation of gardeners.”
Notcutts has planned a year of celebratory activity with the theme of ‘looking forward’ to the future of gardening and the environment. Notcutts will be launching a new and exclusive rose named by the public in May, and later in the year it will be planting 2,500 trees across its 18 garden centre locations nationwide.
