Rivendell Nurseries

Rivendell is THE garden centre as far as I’m concerned. A massive selection of flowers, plants, bulbs, seeds, luxurious sheds, other garden accessories and a wonderful café. What more can one ask?
The last time I ate in the café, which can get very hot as its all glass, a robin was dancing across tables and saying hello to people.
Unhygienic perhaps but great nonetheless. The food, as a rule, is lovely, but they stop serving hot meals at 2pm — unless you want to get stuff that’s been sitting out, eat as close to then as possible.
My fiancée and I bought a converter thingymajig for around two quid allowing us to turn run of the mill 2 litre plastic bottles into birdfeeders. An invention of Dragons Den proportions, and a handy way of not spending a bundle on containers to feed tits and things.
For gardeners this place is a must, in my opinion. Its one drawback, I think, the toilets are a bit of a trek from the café. For pensioners or those with mobility issues, this can prove a problem.

The centre has its products in superb displays which really are outstanding. The range of products is excellent and is constantly changing throughout the year. Books are reasonably priced with some good bargains. Unfortunately, I do find many of their other goods are extremely expensive, particularly the flowers and shrubs — which is what garden centres are all about.
One example is a 1.5m high cupressus (conifer) at a staggering £62. They are very widely used as hedges in Spain which I was hoping to copy — but not at that price! Another is a barbecue retailing at £199.99 which is on sale elsewhere for £174.99. No prizes for guessing where I bought!
Their Privilege Club card gives you 10% off everything. I asked the staff whether my wife could use it if I wasn’t there and was told she could as it wasn’t ‘a legal document’ and I could even let a neighbour use it. On inspection of the terms and conditions it turns out that it is not transferable and can only be used by the authorised signatory It’s a lovely place to visit but not so good for buying stuff at.

We’re quite lucky that Rivendell garden centre is close to us. It’s great to nip down on a Sunday afternoon as its more than just plants. There is a large free car park and inside the entrance is a section all full of food with luxury chilled and frozen items and fresh cakes and bread. Some of the choices are amazing but can be very expensive. Also inside are areas selling books, cards, clothing, luggage and bags and giftware. Outside is a large selection of garden plants and nice ornaments and decorations for the garden which can be reasonably priced and we find that they do a large selection of ornamental pots at good prices. When all the shopping and mooching gets too much they have a large coffee shop that does sandwiches and cakes, and also hot meals so something for everyone. When we’ve asked the staff for something they’ve always been really helpful as some things don’t have a price on and you have to go and find out. We’ve also taken family there as something to do, being more than a garden centre it can easily pass a couple of hours!

I am a rather large fan of garden centres; I don’t know why, maybe because whenever I seem to go to one I’m all relaxed and chilled out for some reason. But I do find garden centre relaxing and Rivendell is no different, maybe it’s the sounds of water features.
Rivendell offer a great selection of a great many things. The books in particular are always very reasonably priced. The café is sweet, full of old dears and never too expensive. And there Christmas displays are always lovely. To get into the garden centre on during the festive season you have to walk through a snowy path where they display all their trees. They do also sell real Christmas trees outside.