{"id":3851,"date":"2020-01-10T21:47:22","date_gmt":"2020-01-10T20:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grayshottgardeners.net\/?p=3851"},"modified":"2020-01-11T10:26:54","modified_gmt":"2020-01-11T09:26:54","slug":"what-makes-your-local-garden-centre-tick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grayshottgardeners.net\/?p=3851","title":{"rendered":"What makes your local Garden Centre tick?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Grayshott Gardeners started the new year with a fascinating peek behind the scenes at one of our most popular chain of Garden Centres. Sarah Squire<\/strong>, Chairman of Squire\u2019s Garden Centres, gave our first lecture of 2020, and explained the history and the ethos of this long standing family business. She also gave us an insight into some of the challenges Garden Centres face today, and how they try to manage them.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Squires was founded in 1936 by Sarah\u2019s grandfather, D.J. Squire. It started as a company that took on small scale landscaping work, and soon expanded into plant nurseries. It wasn\u2019t until the 1950s and 60s that Garden Centres as we know them today came about \u2013 driven by the fact that people now cared for their own gardens (employing gardeners had become a thing of the past), widespread car ownership, the availability of container grown plants, and the emergence of garden centres in the US. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\nW\nhen\nDJ retired Sarah\u2019s father, Colin, took over the running of Squires.\nHe remained Chairman for 30 years, and still plays a part in running\nthe business today. Sarah took over as Chairman in 2019. She has\nhad many roles different roles in the company, starting off as a\nSaturday girl, and has worked outside the company as a solicitor\nspecialising in commercial property. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Squires today has\n16 Garden Centres in the Surrey\/Sussex\/Berkshire\/West London area \u2013\nthree of which are very familiar to Grayshott Gardeners. Squires are\nhappy to keep this tight geographical footprint, as it allows them to\nreally understand their customers and their needs. They employ\nnearly 1,000 people, across a whole range of disciplines, from IT and\nMarketing to plant and animal experts. \n<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Their business is very seasonal, with plant sales peaking in spring and early summer. And throughout the year Saturdays and Sundays are their busiest times. In order to attract customers outside of these peaks, diversification is key \u2013 with restaurants and Christmas decorations being good examples of this. However, we were left in no doubt that it is plants that are the raison d\u2019\u00eatre of this great family business, which raised a cheer from this audience of gardeners!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

S.W.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grayshott Gardeners started the new year with a fascinating peek behind the scenes at one of our most popular chain of Garden Centres. Sarah Squire, Chairman of Squire\u2019s Garden Centres, gave our first lecture of 2020, and explained the history and the ethos of this long standing family business. She also gave us an insight … Continue reading What makes your local Garden Centre tick?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"two_page_speed":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-club-lectures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grayshottgardeners.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grayshottgardeners.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grayshottgardeners.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grayshottgardeners.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grayshottgardeners.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3851"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/grayshottgardeners.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3857,"href":"https:\/\/grayshottgardeners.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3851\/revisions\/3857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grayshottgardeners.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grayshottgardeners.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grayshottgardeners.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}