It was a cold miserable Sunday, we'd spent a long time forcing ourselves from under the warm duvet…read moreand once finally roused I wanted to go out and do something. Nothing crazy exciting, but something out and about nonetheless. So, I informed my boyfriend that we were going to a garden centre. It was either that or shopping, so you can guess which he chose. (I'm not really that much of a dragon, but if I hadn't we'd have mooched all our Sunday away in the house.)
So. After losing our way past Ilkley, and with a little help from my iPhone, we made our way to the Smith Stephen H Garden Centre. Joy! First off, it's huge. A veritable maze of rooms, not exclusively related to the garden, but full of browsing items all the same. The first room we wandered through was the indoor plants section. There was a reasonable amount of variety, with exciting cacti and carnivorous plants to behold, and a number of lovely primroses, cyclamen and more. I'm not an expert at flora names, so for the purposes of the review, I'll do my best to describe the things I liked!
The next room held a number of exciting canvass prints and artwork, a range of different fire contraptions for the garden, water features and a number of other garden furniture items. There was a food section, hosting jams, chutneys, snacks, cordials and all other things that give a farmers market vibe. Onward we went and discovered the outdoor plant section. A cornucopia of shrubs, bushes, hedges and other exotic plants were there for the viewing. Sadly, as it is February, the majority weren't in bloom so perhaps it was a poor choice of Sundays to browse. However, the more avid gardener would more than likely have the imagination to picture an end result with the variety on display!
The prices were really rather reasonable with many of the pots retailing at far cheaper than I've seen at, say, B&Q. However, for some reason the bay and olive trees were a lot more expensive than the ones I'd bought previously at B&Q. Go figure. I ended up purchasing a sort of grassy tree indoor house plant and an orchid-esque exotic looking plant too. Neither have labels, so my guess is as good as yours in terms of the names for these plants! Here's hoping I manage to keep them alive without instruction... I also bought a minuscule leaf plant whose green leaves have pink lines, which look like weird veins. We both liked that.
All in all, this lovely centre is well worth a browse. If you're impatient, like us, you won't spend more than an hour or so inside but it will be an hour well spent for some Sunday browsing. I can tell I'll be back! (I want a Venus Fly Trap for starters... )
