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.
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.

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

Rivendell, Widnes, Cheshire

Solihull, West Midlands

St Albans, Hertfordshire

Staines, Middlesex

Tunbridge Wells, Kent

Victoria, Featherstone, Pontefract

Wheatcroft, Edwalton, Nottingham

Woodbridge, Suffolk

Woodford Park, Cheshire

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