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As I sit in the car park I can feel every ounce of punk rock being sucked out of me.
It's a temple to normal. Everyone in there celebrates being as bland as the next person and give each other a smug nod at fitting in.
Of course it's an ideal opportunity to top of your wardrobe with the finest that cotton traders can offer to go with your shire horses calendar.
When young free and single I used to laugh at Mr Clean helping his prim and proper wife loading little pots of flowers into the back of their sensible hatch back as I headed off to the next bit of single track.
If you see a man with a face of misery loading flowers into the back of a mondeo that's me.
Tomorrow though,will be mine . Tomorrow will Crass not cress.
Burn it down.
You think it's bad now? Just wait until Xmas!
I love a good garden centre, me... The big dobbies near me is just like a really odd garden. Though all I've bought there is aquarium hose for brake bleeding, paraffin for chain cleaning, and carnivorous plants for my mum.
And they have a bike shop in it!
Usually have decent toilets and cafes. As a cyclist, what else do we need in life?
Actually, as a male cyclist, I'm not that fussed by the toilets aspect.
One near us has an awesome cafe, home made cakes galore!
I'm always in awe of the places, the work that must go on to keep the plants going , the ranges they are able to maintain, & the gardens some of them have. Again some of those same boring "norms" your judging, have gardening skill/knowledge that taken years to attain.. everyone different, why be so judgemental about it.
Op
What makes you really sad though ?
It may be ,that in your heart you always were that garden centre bloke, but just resisted ,with all those fake punk rock games?
You don’t need to torture yourself any longer,embrace your love of shrubs. 😛
[quote=zippykona said]As I sit in the car park I can feel every ounce of punk rock being sucked out of me.
You're not the first, don't worry.
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Buying flaaars is a way off for me. Still on the heavy lifting end of the jobs at the house we've just moved to.
Spent yesterday climbing and dismantling 40'-50' laurel trees. Good fun, utterly knackering. Definitely got my money's worth out of the Silky Sugoi and the leg sheath!
In my dim and distant past, my friends and I had a competition to find the single most pointless and useless "gift" in these sorts of places. Then one day on a ride, we instead, had a coffee and a cake in a dobbies cafe...
That moment was the death of my youth, right there.
Meanwhile, over on www.gardensnpondworld.com/forum there's a thread going on about some contented gardener being dragged round another bike shop full of sad, miserable middled aged folk desperately snapping up crazily expensive carbon bicylces and luminous pyjamas just so they can ride round in big circles criticising other hobbyists.
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The worst ones are definitley the ones with cafes
Go pastiche car park at five to ten and it's like a scene from dawn of the dead with them all gathered outside the doors 😀
Now at checkout looking at toothpaste.
Wtf are they selling toothpaste?
Wtf are they selling toothpaste?
Good question, I would imagine most people who frequent garden centres take their teeth out to clean them...
Northwind - and not a bad roast dinner either.
😳
I just met mrs_oab and eldest_oab for lunch at garden centre, a few mins walk from the office, post piano grade 3 practical.
#somiddleclass
😳
Good question, I would imagine most people who frequent garden centres take their teeth out to clean them...
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If I could post a link on this stupid phone, Old Guys Rule do a great Motorshed - Place of Spades T-shirt.
I used to run the computer system in a large garden centre.
God they're miserable places, full of moaners who ask advice then claim to know a better answer to the one they've been given by someone who's studied for years and worked in horticulture for many more.
Although the owners can be just as bad. Got told off once by the owner for laughing because 'I wasn't paid to laugh'.
Was there one Christmas Day helping to water the plants (yes this needs doing even when the shop's closed) and people were banging on the doors wanting us to open so they could come in and do some shopping. 😯
This was Christmas Day FFS!!!! 😯 Do these people not have any lives???
Ahh you need to find some nurseries to feed your planting needs - they're a bit more niche, often cheaper and have some great characters working there.
Garden Centres were great when the kids were little, they're not so little now.
Ahh you need to find some nurseries to feed your planting needs
Was just going to post this.. Garden centres (The big ones with cafes, normally found on a roundabout somewhere) are horrible places, but I can happily potter around a small independent one or nursery for ages. They tend to have better plants as well and the chap/lady working there normally actually knows what they're talking about.
Where we now live isn't far from Bridgemere Garden Centre. We drive straight past it and go to the proper family run nursery in the next village.
As Chambord says, far better quality plants and staff who are willing to help.
One trade report I read while still working in one of those godforsaken places said that over 60% of the turnover in most Garden Centres was down to gift sales not plants, which I think says a lot about them.
I used to work at one of the places mentioned here and having seen the kitchen staffs staff room I wouldn't eat anything they'd had their filthy hands on. That and the horrendous way they treat the staff.
don't know what happened we went with good intentions ❓
the dream
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the reality
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were not lazy there's too much biking to be done
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All gardening should require petrol. I'm actually quite happy riding on the mower with nanobits on my lap, hacking away at trees with a chainsaw, or even attacking the nettles with a strimmer (both without nano bits!). I'll be buggered if I'm going to go shopping for pansies (or whatever) though. Part of the deal struck when buying the new house was this. Seems to have worked for the last year!
It's the acres of gift tat that you have to get past before you even get to anything remotely garden related, find it very frustrating, as above a nursery is much better.
Meh - surely the STWer would eschew the garden centre in favour of his local nursery. I mean it's like buying your bike stuff at Halfords rather than going to the LBS.
http://www.bluebellcottage.co.uk/index.shtml if you're in Cheshire this place is great. Agreed garden centre's are pants.
I have to say I don't mind a potter around Gordon Riggs in Todmorden, bit of food in local pub, then walk up to the "beach" 😆
My wife used to be a shift leader for cleaning at a large garden centre (which is looking more like a shopping centre nowadays). The highlight of her day would be when these day trips of pensioners rolled up in coaches (really) and obviously, for most of the old dears, a visit to the lav would be the first port of call.
Now unfortunately, due to various age related issues, going to the toilet for many of these people was a troublesome task filled with complicated issues like sitting down before going for a poo, actually entering the cubicle before opening their bowels and wiping their bottoms with something other than their hands.
After every group had visited the toilet, the cleaners (who would wait outside) all had to don industrial protection and do a deep clean of the toilets, pick up poo from the floor, bleach the poo covered handles, pick up the discarded knickers, that sort of thing before going to wait outside for the next group.
People who visit garden centres. That's you that is. 😉
Though all I've bought there is aquarium hose for brake bleeding, paraffin for chain cleaning, and carnivorous plants for my mum
These carnivorous plants....which ones exactly can manage a whole mum?
The one near my Mums house has got a wicked tropical fish shop, I could walk around there for ages.
Sod gardening though, i won't even mow the lawn in my house - the neighbour gave me a right ear-full when she saw my wife 8 and a half months pregnant pushing the Flymo about. It was her idea, it was meant to bring on labour - I didn't argue though.
Garden centre on my way home from work has a cheese counter and three different types of artisan pork scratchings. Some days the car goes in on its own, I'm a reluctant passenger, honest.
It's funny how putting the word 'artisan' in front of something seems to triple the price.
A bit like 'enduro'
I got a lovely Periwinkle from one yesterday.
Rock & Roll.
At our local garden centre there's a bloke who sells beehives. I was telling him how all the plants round our singletrack were dying. He said it's because there are no bees there to pollenate the plants and I ought to buy a hive. He sells hives from 100 bees to 1300 bees. I asked him what was needed.
He said a medium would do.
Which proves the saying.
650 bees will make the trail come alive... boom tish!
🙂
+1 BigJohn - thats pretty good...
-1000000 Garden centres..(shudder)