The first ever Green City Town and Country Awards were presented at this year’s UK Garden Centre Association Conference (GCA) January 26th 2009.

Castle Gardens of the Gardens Group, won the best of the best and received the Green City Town and Country Outstanding Commitment Award. This centre showed impressive commitment to reaching across the generations to promote the power of plants through a raft of local community actions. This included hands on work with Britain in Bloom and the creation of an allotment garden at a local school for teenagers with learning difficulties and lots more. The in-store requirements were also exceeded with coherent Green City messaging to customers promoting the benefits plants and green bring to helping with carbon footprint, air quality, climate change mitigation etc.


The new awards are a result of co-operation between the Green City Town and Country initiative and the UK GCA, which represents 150 of the UK’s top independent garden retailers. The two new prestigious awards, set around stringent audit criteria, are an incentive for garden centres to create a plants and green space legacy with their local communities and promote the real value of plants and green space.

In total 14 centres, that's almost 10% of the UK GCA membership, qualified for the Green City Town and Country Community Award which gives them the right to display the logo and use it in their promotions and customer communications to show customers that they are local community champions and that they care.

List of the 14 Green City Town and Country Commmunity Award

Sunshine Garden Centre
Trelawney Garden Centre
Aylett Nurseries
Brimsmore Gardens (The Gardens Group)
Trelawney Garden Leisure
Caerphilly Garden Centre
All-in-One Garden Centre
Barton Grange Garden Centre Bolton
Coolings Nurseries
Chessington Garden Centre
The Millbrook Company

Plus the Outstanding Commitment Award Nominees:
OVERALL WINNER Castle Gardens (The Gardens Group)
Grosvenor Garden Centre
Whitehall Garden Centre

Presenting the awards at this year’s GCA Conference, Amanda Long, one of the GCA judges said:

‘This is social leadership. This is how businesses will differentiate themselves in the 21st century. Good business is about good neighbour to neighbour relations and this approach is at the heart of the gardening industry’.