Garden centre

A garden center is a shop specializing in the sale of ornamental plants and garden accessories. It is offered as comprehensive a range, in contrast to the flower shops sell cut flowers no or at least plays a subordinate role. The greenhouse areas are used as opposed to so-called Endverkaufsbetrieben only for the product presentation and not for the production of plants.

Many garden centers offer their customers services within the field of floristry, gardening advice, or garden design. This are specializations in the three areas of cultivation, sale and service a witnessed for several years development. The profession gardener was In response, in North Rhine -Westphalia and Bavaria extended ( disciplines floriculture and nursery ) to focus sales and consulting as so-called sale gardener. In Austria there is the profession " garden center Kaufmann ", which is a specialization within the retail merchants education.

Another development is the differentiation in the operating size: Apart owner-managed, usually smaller garden centers and garden center chains, there are increasingly large garden centers, which are often attached to a hardware store. A special niche also form the already mentioned above, smaller Endverkaufsbetriebe with its own production or [ nursery ]. In contrast to the larger centers and chains with its wide range of ornamental plants and seasonal entrainment products you find here is often a special range (eg fruit trees, avenue trees, solitary shrubs or perennials ) or a wider range of better garden plants (eg large conifers, bonsai and topiaries ). In addition, smaller firms often offer a professionally valuable advice as well as advanced services (eg garden planning, delivery and planting services ). An example of an owner-operated garden center with its own tree nursery production is the Giesebrecht KG in Lünen.

A pure garden center chain and market leader in Germany is Dehner (headquarters: Rain). The Wyss Seeds and Plants Ltd operates under the name Wyss Garden house the largest trade garden center chain in Switzerland. The largest Austrian garden center group is Bella Flora.

Co owner-managed garden centers, often in a franchise system are, for example, " Sagaflor " (over 800 independent retailers with the system groups "bell andris ", "Experience Green" and " ... I Flourish on! ") " Egesa - gardening "," Fauna land "( ZEUS group), " The green professionals " ( Switzerland ), " Europatuin " (Netherlands).

Europe's largest garden center with over 80,000 m² of retail space is Fricke 's Garden Center (formerly Meyer KG ) in Oyten - Bassen. The first garden center in Europe (1960 open ) and since 2001 at the same time the largest indoor garden center in Europe is ' Dinger 's Garden Center " in Cologne (total area 30,000 m²).