Creative Gardens acquires new store

Family run garden centre Creative Gardens has added a fourth store to the group. It has acquired the Logwood Mill Garden Centre near Ballyclare, following the reopening of its existing award-winning garden centres after three months of lockdown in Northern Ireland.

Creative Gardens has been listed alongside 13 other Northern Ireland companies as the one of the most inspirational UK firms. It boasts centres in Donaghadee, Bushmills, Galgorm Castle and now at the former Logwood Mill Garden Centre.

“It does perhaps seem a strange thing to do given the uncertainly posed by COVID and Brexit,” confessed Jenny, the youngest of the Gass family which owns and runs the centres. “But the opportunity came along, and we couldn’t resist it. Logwood is a long-term investment for us, and we are confident it will be a huge success. My parents started the business close to 40 years ago and my two brothers Philip and Oliver and I are really keen to carry it on to the next level. We just love the changing seasons and the wonderful range of products a garden centre sells represent that so well.

“We spend a huge amount of time and effort presenting our beautiful plants and gardening products to help inspire our customers. We love to create interesting displays and use as much colour as possible with everything that we do.

“Our coffee shops are places to relax and enjoy delicious homemade food; we make almost everything we sell in our cafes ourselves freshly each day.”

The new centre at Logwood was officially opened on Monday 19th April. Jenny adds: “We are so excited to finally be open. We’ve had such great feedback from so many lovely customers already and we look forward to welcoming lots more new customers to our centre over the years to come.”

Creative Gardens now has four centres with huge plant areas and cafes covering much of Northern Ireland’s population. It employs 230 people and expects turnover to exceed £10m in its next financial year.