The latest from Ruxley Manor
Ruxley Manor Garden Centre
- April 17, 2024
House Plant News
Houseplants have always had a strong association with Ruxley Manor, going back to when the holding company, H.Evans & Sons was founded in 1876. Over the years, not only did we grow Outdoor Plants in our many glasshouses but in the run up to Christmas, the glasshouses would be converted into a carpet of red, as poinsettias were grown by the thousands, in preparation to be delivered to Marks & Spencer stores across the country, amongst others. However, as time moved on, our Houseplant Department somewhat diminished, as customer interest for indoor plants waned and therefore, whilst the rest of the garden centre grew, our Houseplant Department became smaller and smaller.
Thankfully, over the last couple of years, perhaps driven by Covid and people working from home and therefore wanting to improve their environment, interest in Houseplants has increased significantly and it became clear to us that our indoor plant offering was no longer big enough, with too small a selection of both plants and pots. Therefore, we were extremely excited to recently open our brand new Houseplant Department, located next to our Food Hall, with a far bigger range of plants and accessories. The whole department also has a close link to the history of the business and our association with Covent Garden, when we used to sell our home grown plants there. Andrew and James (our current Managing Directors), remember going up there a few times when they were children, in the very early hours of the morning, to help (well they thought they were being helpful!) and being amazed at the hustle and bustle of the market. It was almost like another world happening whilst everyone else was tucked up in bed, fast asleep. In the new department, you will see one of our displays has a backdrop of an original image of the H.Evans & Sons Ltd stall at Covent Garden Market, with John Evans (4th generation) and his father Cyril (3rd generation), hard at work.
The history of the business is something that we are extremely proud of and therefore it is great to be able to showcase it within the new Houseplant Department and to see a resurgence in an area in which we have such a strong association. Therefore, please make sure you do pay it a visit when you are next at Ruxley and do look at some of the old family images within our Gift Wrap Area, where you’ll be able to see the carpet of red for yourselves!
Food Hall News
At Ruxley, we never like to sit still for long and have started 2024 with a bang, with various projects taking place and one of those is the development of our Food Hall. Food has become an ever important part of our business and that applies to the garden centre industry in general. Not so long ago, garden centres were all about horticulture and core gardening products, now a lot of us have grown into destination centres where customers can come and while the day away, buying gifts, finding the perfect plant to add a splash of colour to the garden, browsing our Food Hall and meeting friends or family for a bite to eat in The Mulberry Tree restaurant. My goodness, how the garden centre sector has evolved!
We always felt that a Food Hall would be a very welcome addition to Ruxley Manor and in some respects was the missing piece of our jigsaw, to give Ruxley the overall offering that we wanted to provide to our customers. We originally opened our Food Hall 12 years ago in 2012 and therefore were very excited to be extending that offering at the start of this year. Now that the project is complete, it has allowed us to grow the Food Hall by about 40%, therefore increasing our offering across the board but in fresh fruit and vegetables in particular. You can now enter the centre via our Food Hall entrance, which takes you straight into our fruit and veg section, with a fantastic selection of freshly chosen products which are delivered to us on a daily basis, fresh from market. We have also introduced a range of our own brand chutneys and preserves, with flavours to cover every taste. Supporting local suppliers is also important to us and so you’ll see plenty of our ‘locally sourced’ signage in the easily recognisable mustard yellow branding, covering everything from cakes to eggs and beer to preserves.
Our Food Hall team really are extremely proud of their new area and how the department has grown and so please make sure that you pay them a visit when you next visit us, we’re sure that you will find something to tickle your taste buds!
