A trip to the Garden Centre can be quite an interesting event nowadays. An evolutionary progression from the good old ‘Nursery’, it can be a wealth of observation and frustration.
A typical trip out to buy a packet of seeds…….

The Car Park is usually twice the size of the Centre itself and you find it difficult to park because of the Coaches dumping off a party of people to squeeze away two hours from their ‘£10 Country Mystery Tour’.
After avoiding the ill disciplined children chasing each other because the parents are busy getting the six foot tree they’ve just brought into the back of a ‘People Wagon’ along with the two dogs, you finally park approximately a mile and a half from the entrance.

When getting into the Store you may have that horrible thought that you’ve come to the wrong place. You’re surrounded with small water features, plastic flowers and CD’s of soothing mystical music and probably a few smelly candles for good measure.

Finding the seeds is a great game, because to get to them you need to walk past about 40 franchises bearing no relevance to gardens whatsoever.
There’s the Arts & Crafts shop where you occasionally see someone buying something, the Jacussi area with man in suit holding leaflets, the Mantlepiece and Shelving Ornaments Shop with little models of ‘man with fishing rod’, ‘Two fox cubs playing by tree’ and ‘Not proportional country cottage’ etc.

Onward you go fighting your way through the kids running between the Pet Shop to stare at fish and hamsters and the Model Shop where they sell the trains you once had and model aeroplanes you can never afford. These two shops are usually at opposite ends of the Store just to annoy you.

By this time you could do with a coffee from the Restaurant but give up after you see the 60 long queue waiting to buy the piece of cake which looks as if it’s been imported on a 6,000 mile cargo boat trip.

Ah, there’s the vegetable seeds, where they have the Christmas decorations between late August and December 24th. It’s fun this bit because they sell 5 brands and they’re all a zig zag walk between. You get so confused that you only realise you’ve brought the wrong variety when you get home.

So, you’ve achieved your goal, maybe with bruised legs by the side swipes of customers faulty steering flatbed trollies with 6 bags of compost on them and nausea from the fertilizers they put in the part of the Centre with the least amount of air flow.

You reach the Cash Desk via the Book Shop, franchise selling things made out of rope, expensive biscuits shelf and country style tweedy shop only to find the little china pot you brought on a compulsive buying kick has to be paid for at the place you picked it up and that’s a five mile route march back.

On the way home you pop into the Supermarket for some milk only to find you could have brought the seeds there for a third of the price!

My goodness, I really am becoming a miserable old git!!