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Garden Centre Reviews
NOTCUTTS
GARDEN CENTRE
The history of the Notcutts Garden Centre goes back many years. We
pick up the history trail in 1890 when a certain John Wood is running a nursery in
Woodbridge. At the same time Roger Compton Notcutt is busy running his nursery
business as Boughton Road Nurseries. See the bottom part of this page for a list of all
the UK Notcutts Garden centres and links to independent two page reviews of each. Meantime, at Boughton Road Nurseries, Roger Notcutt also had a thriving nursery business.
These nurseries specialised in chrysanthemums, dahlias, specimen plants and decorative
plants in general. In 1897 he was looking to expand his business into larger premises and
read that John Wood had died and that the nurseries he owned were up for sale by auction.
Roger Notcutt bought Woodbridge Nurseries in 1897 and found the premises so suitable that
he moved his business there and moved into the on-site impressive Georgian house with his
wife Maud. The business thrived both the cultivation of ornamental plants and fruit trees. In 1897
Woodbridge Nurseries had a catalogue of 961 plants and tree. By 1936 the catalogue had
grown extensively and listed 2,724 plants and trees. The volume of plants sold had increased
by an even larger percentage. Woodbridge Nurseries had been developed into a thriving and a
well known business. In 1938 Roger Notcutt suffered a massive heart attack and died. The business was then run
by his son, Tom Notcutt, for only a few months before he also died in late 1938. Roger
Notcutt's wife, Maud, now took over the reins and ran the business. Maud was an excellent businesswoman and expanded the business slowly but surely. In 1944
Maud Notcutt changed the structure of the business and converted it to a limited company. In 1955 Maud Notcutt died and Abbott Notcutt was appointed Chairman of the Notcutts Ltd.
1958 saw the opening of the first Notcutts garden centre, it was at Woodbridge. In 1964
Charles Notcutt became managing director. The expansion of the garden centre side of the
business continued to expand both by building new garden centres and acquisition of existing
ones. By 2009 Notcutts had 20 garden centres in total. 2007 saw probably the most fundamental change in the business. The nursery side of
Notcutts was sold off to John Woods Nurseries. Notcutts have left the plant growing business
for the foreseeable future and the Notcutts garden centres buy all their plants in now from
other growers. Below we list all the Notcutts garden centres. Those which are underlined have links to
two page reviews of them which cover the garden centre, the plants sold there and the cafe.
These reviews are totally independent, written by GardenAction reviewers, and have lots of
pictures to back them up. Ashton Park,
Ashton-under-Lyne, Manchester Booker, Marlow,
Buckinghamshire Cambridge, Horningsea Cranleigh, Surrey Dukeries,
Worksop, Nottinghamshire Maidstone, Kent Norwich, Norfolk Mattocks Roses, Nuneham Courtney, Oxford Peterborough, Cambridgeshire Solihull, West Midlands St Albans, Hertfordshire Staines, Middlesex Tunbridge Wells, Kent Victoria, Featherstone, Pontefract Wheatcroft, Edwalton, Nottingham Woodbridge, Suffolk
John Wood had built up a very successful fruit tree and rose business. His catalogue
included nearly 200 varieties of fruit trees and over 120 roses. He died in early
1897 leaving no heirs.