The Garden Centre Association has its winter conference at the Crowne Plaza Heythrop park near to Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire from 23 – 25 January 2012.
During the recession as people invest more in their communities the garden centres are ideally placed to provide materials for projects, so says the Horticultural Trades Association, Retail strategy action plan suggesting that centres can be community hubs.
But to be sure of hearing all the best ideas to boost garden centre businesses go along to the GCA's conference . The two days begin with a review of performance during 2011, with presentations for the Dick Allen Award, Worrall Cup, Barton Grange Trophy, Best People Award, GIMA Excellence in Garden Product Retailing Award and the Outdoor Living Award.
The conference speakers include:
Jim Gardiner the RHS Director of Horticulture
GCA E-learning initiative
Mario Dolcezza – Managing Director of Diciamo
Clare Rayner - Founder and Managing Director of Retail Acumen
Boyd Douglas-Davies and Steve Hallam from LOFA
Ian Boardman GCA Assessor
Dr David Hessayon author of expert gardening guides.
Scott Seaborn,head of mobile technologies at Ogilvy Group UK
Andrew McMillan, principal consultant at Charteris PLC
Geoff Harding, Bank of England
Motivational speaker Michael Heppell of Flip It fame
Bob Sherman, chief horticultural officer Garden Organic
Wayne Hemingway of Hemingway design
While garden centres developed from plant nurseries around the 1960s within the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) they were then able to offer some standards and quality controls. Only a decade later it became today's Garden Centre Association, in independent group that now has over 200 UK members.
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