Cultivating a future for family garden centre business

When Paul Harvey qualified as an accountant three years ago, he was faced with a choice of emigrating with his fellow work colleagues to London, Sydney or Toronto, or teaming up his brother Justin to take over the family's garden centre business in south Dublin.

At the time, Windyridge Nurseries was at a crossroads. Established by their grand-aunt Sheila Harvey in 1962, the business was badly in need of investment and a revamp.

“We were lucky to be located in a densely populated area with decent-sized gardens, and we knew there was a strong demand, but a huge amount of work needed to be done to get customers back through the doors,” Paul explains.

During the boom when land in the area attracted a premium price, two well-known garden centres in the area, Mackey’s and Harry Byrne’s, were sold off for development, leaving a gap in the market for quality plants and gardening equipment.

“Windyridge needed a lot of work at the time and wasn’t in a position to pick up that business,” Paul says. “When we took over, that was our aim.”

With more than six years experience as a landscape gardener at the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin and the Tropical Botanic Gardens near Brisbane in Australia, Justin was ideally placed to take over the creative side of the business, while Paul would focus on accounts, marketing and negotiating with suppliers.

Shared vision
The vision they shared was for an attractive centre offering an extensive range of good quality Irish plants and a personal service from their team of experienced staff. They set about clearing the overgrown areas on part of the site to create extra space, moved the car park to the front to improve access, built a large polytunnel to grow their own herbaceous plants on site, repaired the old greenhouses and installed modern flood benches to accommodate new plants from suppliers around Ireland and Italy.

“We want customers to come in and have a boutique experience, to walk around and see the plants growing, to feel them in their hands, and get enthusiastic about growing them themselves,” Paul says.

While the downturn in development and particularly wet summers in recent years have seen garden centre sales decline significantly, turnover at Windyridge has tripled since the brothers took over in 2010.

But getting the centre up to standard is still a work in progress, and all profits are being invested back into the business. A modern watering system has recently been installed to reduce labour. And to save on water charges they have dug a well and installed a water harvesting system to take rainfall landing on the 900 square metre greenhouses to an on-site reservoir.

Getting customers in the door in the first instance is the biggest challenge, as the centre is hidden behind a house on Rochestown Avenue.

The brothers have worked hard at establishing ties with the local community, the core of their customer base, through information campaigns, loyalty offers, and by taking a stall at the Dún Laoghaire People's Park market.

Weekly slot
Paul will have a weekly slot on the local Sunshine Radio station for the summer giving gardening tips and advice, and a new e-newsletter will keep subscribers informed about what they should be planting, pruning and feeding according to the time of year.

“Once we get customers interested, repeat business is very high. If you can get people excited about their garden at the beginning of the season, it really helps; they come back time and time again throughout the summer,” he says. “Growing your own fruit, vegetables and herbs at home is becoming more and more popular, so we have worked on that especially this year.”

Several smaller garden centres have recently opened in the area, and larger homeware stores like Woodies and other established garden centres provide tough competition, but Paul contends Windyridge can hold its own when it comes to price.

“For most things, we are the same or often cheaper,” he says. “Many other outlets also don’t have the same variety. They have basic bedding plants, but we have a much greater selection of larger shrubs and things like hedging bamboo.

“People like the experience they get when they come in, meeting our knowledgeable staff and myself and my brother, who are keeping the family business going.

“It is a pleasant place to wander around. They may only buy one or two things, but that’s okay; we want to offer an experience rather than just a place to shop.”