For the geographical distribution of these stores, see the Garden Retail map of the top 100 garden centres.
1. Longacres Nursery, Bagshot, Surrey
£15m
Unusually, Longacres offers one of the largest cut-flower departments in any garden centre. Originally a nursery, this is one of the largest garden centre outlets in the South East of England. The owner is Nigel Long, whose father Peter Long bought the site more than 30 years ago. He lived on site in a caravan while building up the centre in the 1970s. It is situated on 4ha of land.
2. Scotsdales, Cambridge
£13.3m
Scotsdales managing director Caroline Owen is chairman of the HTA retail committee and is an industry spokesperson on many issues. Her Garden Retail Award-winning family garden centre in Cambridge has a strong community role and features dozens of events each year as well as an onsite cancer help centre, donated by Soctsdales and named in honour of Owen's father David Rayner.
Plants (£3.5m) and garden care (£4m) form the majority of sales. Sundries and bird care are supplemented by demonstration gardens advertising hard-landscaping offerings, as well as pet, gift, café and furniture sales areas.
3. Bridgemere Nursery & Garden World, Cheshire
£12.55m
Legendary garden centre pioneer John Ravenscroft set up Bridgemere in 1961 as a rose nursery, with three employees.
The 2007 Garden Retail Award-winning Ravenscroft described it as "a little garden shed in a small field". It is now one of the largest garden centres in Europe, and receives around 1.8 million annual visitors. A 28,000sq m display garden is open to the public free of charge. The display also includes recreations of prize-winning gardens from the Tatton Park and Chelsea flower shows.
Ravenscroft holds the RHS Veitch Memorial Medal and was awarded the RHS Victoria Medal of Honour in 2008. In 2006, Bridgemere Garden World was bought for £15m by Wyevale Garden Centres. Wyevale announced plans in 2008 to demolish the existing buildings and redevelop the site.
4. Webbs, Wychbold, Worcestershire
£12.4m
Garden Retail Award-winning Webbs had a £5m redevelopment in 2007 and is now perhaps the best-known destination garden centre in the country. Webbs, which is renowned for its staff training and motivation days, is a member of the Tillington buying group alongside other big hitters such as Scotsdales, Alton Garden Centre, Bents Garden Centre, Frosts Garden Centres, Hayes Gardenworld, Otter Nurseries, Ruxley Manor Garden Centre, Squire's Group of Garden Centres, Van Hage Garden Company and Whitehall Garden Centres.
5. Burford Garden Company, Oxfordshire
£12m
Nigel Johnson founded the Cotswold-based high-end centre in the 1980s. It is now a "garden, home and kitchen as one" centre. Johnson is a fan of art, wine and Harley Davidsons. Paul Gingell is managing director and is a former Harrods retailer who champions local produce. A second smaller centre is at Burford House in Worcestershire. Beautiful, useful, hand-picked and theatrical are the watchwords at Burford.
6. Cadbury Garden & Leisure, Bristol
£11.4m
Garden & Leisure operations director Carol Paris says of the Garden Retail Award-winning centre: "There is nothing complicated about retail. It is common sense. It is difficult finding solutions to behind-the-scenes problems, but the customer isn't interested in that. All they care about is getting the right product at the right price, when they need it."
7. Bents, Glazebury, Cheshire
£11.2m
More than £3m has been invested in the Cheshire site on the Garden Retail Award-winning Open Skies all-weather planteria development. Bents is best-known for its restaurant-quality catering and department-store style shopping atmosphere. Managing director is Matthew Bent, who is widely recognised and awarded as one of the best young retailers in the country.
8. Barton Grange, Preston, Lancashire
£11m
Barton Grange is a £15m centre opened by Princess Anne at Brock near Preston in 2008. The centre, replacing one 2km down the road, includes a chandlery and is on a canal. Managing director Guy Topping is a former GCA chairman as was his father Eddie. Barton Grange as a business includes a hotel, nursery and another garden centre at Bolton.
=9. Van Hage Great Amwell, Hertfordshire
£10m
This is Van Hage's flagship site but it is the £25m sale and leaseback Garden Park Investments Peterborough Garden Park scheme, anchored by Van Hage, that has been the main focus recently. Great Amwell, with a refrigerated florists and lots of affluent customers, is the main turnover hub for the ambitious company, run by Chris Roberts.
=9. Dobbies Garden World, Edinburgh
£10m
Spread over 6ha at Melville Nursery, and surrounded by mature beech woodlands, this was one of the first garden centres in the UK. The centre still includes a traditional nursery onsite, along with demonstration gardens.
Features include Edinburgh butterfly and insect world. Chief executive James Barnes' grandfather and great grandfather were both involved in Waterers, which owned Dobbies from 1969-82. There was a management buyout of the business by Barnes from his father David in 1994.
The group was AIM-listed until Tesco bought it out in 2007 for £155m. Barnes aims for 100 centres within a decade. He currently runs 25.
=9. Hayes Garden World, Ambleside, Cumbria
£10m
The family-run Hayes garden centre in Ambleside is a rainy-day icon. Perfectly sited in a busy tourist town, the centre is set for a rebuild.
Malcolm Scott Consultants has planned an extensive redevelopment of the plant sales area to create sales spaces consisting of 1,140sq m, an Open Sky glasshouse to allow the sale of bedding plants all the year round, and a new 1,124sq m glazed covered plant sales area for seasonal plant promotions.
A 2,000sq m-plus open area in a half circle lies adjacent to the protected sales areas and this is accessed by customers under a circular wide canopy. The "Crystal Palace" was opened in 1987.
=9. Otter Nurseries, Ottery St Mary, Devon
£10m
The origins of the business can be traced back to the early 1960s when it grew vegetables and plants for sale in the local East Devon markets.
The Ottery St Mary centre is now surrounded by a complex of growing fields, polytunnels and glasshouses that occupy 40ha, and it produces millions of plants each year for the three Otter centres and the plant centre in Lymington, Hampshire. William Casely is the managing director.
13. Polhill, Sevenoaks, Kent
£9.6m
Polhill Garden Centre at Sevenoaks, Kent, has been established for more than 30 years.
In 1963 Jim and David Novell, the owner and the chief executive of Polhill, bought the land which was at the time a run-down nursery. In 1968 they built more glasshouses for use solely as a nursery for growing chrysanthemums and bedding plants.
The oil crisis of the early 1970s led to them developing the site as a garden centre, which now sprawls across a shopping village with around 15 concessions.
14. Heighley Gate Nursery & Garden Centre, Morpeth, Northumberland
£9.56m
David Lishman established the centre in 1963. The expert plantsman employed 190 staff at the site when he sold up to Wyevale in 2008, to retire.
15. Woodlands Nursery & Garden Centre, Leicestershire
£9.55m
Wyevale bought this destination garden centre and nursery for £9.65m in 2002. Later purchases of centres such as Bridgemere followed the example of Woodlands in that Wyevale was looking to buy the biggest and best independents rather than simply dash to increase numbers by buying chains.
=16. Gordale Nursery & Garden Centre, Merseyside
£9.4m
A family-run garden centre business that has exotic wildfowl roaming around the centre grounds. Established in 1948, Gordale was one of the first garden centres in Britain. Harold and Joyce Nicholson bought the property, while working on a farm in Wiltshire.
=16. Endsleigh Garden & Leisure, Ivybridge, Devon
£9.4m
This is a destination centre set in mid-Devon. It is one of the seven-strong French-owned Garden & Leisure group of multiple Garden Retail Award-winning centres.
18. Huntingdon, Garden & Leisure, Cambridgeshire
£8.6m
Huntingdon Garden & Leisure opened in 2002 and covers 8ha. The Garden Retail Award-winner features a kids club, parent and baby-friendly areas, fitting room, advice, events, restaurant theme nights and is dog-friendly.
=19. Secretts, Milford, Surrey
£8.5m
Secretts is one of the first farm shop garden centres in the UK. It is a century-old, third-generation family business set in the Surrey countryside.
Herbs, fruit, vegetables and salads are produced outdoors and under glass on 60ha of sandy loam.
These crops are delivered direct to wholesale customers within 24 hours of harvesting. Secretts Direct, supplying London chefs and part-owned by Masterchef's Gregg Wallace, opened in 2001.
=19. Garsons Esher, Surrey
£8.5m
This is also a crossover farmshop/pick-your-own/garden centre operation like Secretts. Originally a farm in Surrey, the 140-year-old business had to diversify in the 1970s because of international imports of food, and became a retailer.
A second smaller site was added to the business in 1999 with the purchase of "Fontley Nurseries" - now known as "Garsons at Titchfield".
The current directors are Derek and his son Ian Richardson, with Peter and Bob Thompson.
=19. Haskins Garden Centre, Ferndown, Dorset
£8.5m
Haskins managing director Julian Winfield says its new £2.5m Haskins Ferndown restaurant is turning over up to 60 per cent more a day - up to £8,000 - compared with 2007.
The Dorset centre has also undergone a £700,000 revamp. Southampton-based HPW Partnership designed the new restaurant. Winfield said: "We had a profitable restaurant with £1m turnover, which we knocked down - we also doubled staff numbers so we have to get sales up. The knock-on benefit is more sales in the garden centre. We've done this to improve our profits."
=19. Woodcote Green, Wallington, Surrey
£8.5m
The 50-year-old garden centre and nursery won best themed display at the Garden Retail Awards in 2008.
The centre claims that what sets it apart from other centres is that it grows and cares for a large proportion of its own plants on the 12ha of nurseries that surround the garden centre.
23. Crocus
£8.43m
Mark Fane runs Britain's biggest dedicated online garden centre. He founded the business in 2000 with Peter Clay and blue-chip investors after selling Waterers Landscapes to ISS with his brother Peter for £35m.
24. Bicester Garden Centre, Oxfordshire
£8m
This is situated as the focal point to Bicester Avenue, a £13m, 10.5ha retail scheme close to the out-of-town shopping outlet Bicester Village. The centre is the first be the anchor of a retail park. As such, the turnover is something of an anomaly.
The designer, HPW's Gary Wilburn, calls the scheme "a genuine departure from other schemes worldwide with a garden centre as anchor tenant".
25. Wyevale World's End Garden Centre, Wendover, Buckinghamshire
£7.84m
World's End was bought from Economic Forestry Group in 1995, and is managed by Dale Lewis.
26. Frosts Woburn Sands, Milton Keynes
£7.8m
Frosts has extended its central garden centre to add a £2m building, which opened in 2008.
The energy A-rated building was a first in the sector, says managing director Paul Wright. The four-centre group is part of a larger business founded more than 60 years ago and employing 500 staff in retailing and domestic and commercial landscaping.
27. Peter Barratt's Gosforth, Newcastle
£7.76m
Wyevale bought Peter Barratt's freehold stores in Gosforth (Newcastle) and Stockton-on-Tees, which have sales of £18m a year, in September 2007 along with Barratt's new leasehold in Beverley, which it hoped would turn over £4m by 2009.
The Wyevale Barratt's employ 400 staff and are in affluent areas of the North East.
Peter Barratt is housing tycoon Sir Lawrie Barratt's second son and started his first centre in the late 1970s.
28. Peter Barratt's Stockton
£7.66m
Buying this branch of Barratt's brought up Wyevale's late 2007 spending spree to £50m. The splurge proved to be unwise, in terms of timing, as recession hit the following year.
=29. Sanders Garden World, Somerset
£7.6m
Sir Tom Hunter bought the Sanders site for Wyevale in October 2007. Previously owned by Chris and Mike Sanders and Michelle and Kerry Michael, who built the Somerset centre in 2000/01. Wyevale then progressed the planning permission for a £3m expansion. This had previously been delayed because of the cost of council requirements to build a roundabout. The centre is managed by Peter Burks.
=29. Blue Diamond Trentham, Staffordshire
£7.6m
Blue Diamond managing director Alan Roper aims to attract more ABC1 customers. He lifts footfall during downtimes with more aspirational children's products, clothing and a better-quality restaurant menu. Trentham won Retail Outlet of the Year - Multiple, at the Horticulture Week Awards in 2005. The centre's Italian flavour reflects the magnificent £100m redevelopment of the adjoining Trentham gardens.
The contract to design and operate the centre was awarded to Blue Diamond despite there being some fierce competition from Dobbies and Garden & Leisure among others. Blue Diamond now turns over more than £40m a year.
31. Blooms Gloucester Garden Centre
£7.4m
A new building opened in 2005, replacing a traditional 1970s-built business which previously formed part of Jardinerie before becoming Blooms then in turn Wyevale, which bought the Blooms chain for £330m in February 2007.
32. Wyevale Northampton Garden Centre
£7.14m
One of the original 13 Wyevales when the company floated. It was initially leased from the Commission for the New Town and the freehold was acquired in 1995.
33. Forest Lodge, Farnham, Surrey
£7.1m
Located in affluent Farnham in Surrey, it has a nursery called Garden Style that supplies plants to retail customers, landscapers and contractors.
=34. Brigg Garden Centre, Lincolnshire
£7m
Near Caistor, and owned by entrepreneur Charles Stubbs, this is a successful regional landmark centre.
=34. Chessington Garden Centre, Surrey
£7m
Despite being adjacent to Chessington World of Adventures theme park, this centre failed to win planning permission for extensions in 2007. It remains a friendly independent and has a fine planteria and well-known Christmas grotto.
=34. Dobbies Garden World, Dunfermline
£7m
This centre is in a retail park, next to the usual bowling, cinema and food offerings, which is an unusual location for a garden centre.
However, this site also provides a shoppable garden/farm shop and gift and catering offer.
=34. Dobbies Garden World, Milton Keynes
£7m
Opened in 2006. The 5,000sq m centre created 100 jobs. The 4ha site offers a "leisure experience" that includes river walks and a Roman garden.
It also features a 300-seat restaurant, a farm food hall and deli, an aquatics department, an in-house butcher, a Garden Building Centre and a Natural World gift concession.
=34. Alton Garden Centre, Essex
£7m
Owner Derek Bunker founded the Essex centre in 1971 and now employs 11 members of his extended family among the staff. Bunker's son Andy is a mainstay in the Tillington buying group set-up.
=34. Whitehall Garden Centre, Wiltshire
£7m
Whitehall Garden Centre in Lacock, Wiltshire, emerged from the vision of Phyllis Self, who was 2008 Garden Retail Lifetime Achievement Award-winner.
She is now 101 and still working at the business. Self planned the centre for her farm as a way of diversifying back in 1968.
The centre now has plans for a rebuild on its 8.8ha site. She says: "The retail the business started as a small shed in the middle of a field."
=40. Haskins West End, Southampton
£6.9m
The site is managed by Matthew Hill. This centre has a Haskins' family-owned HobbyCraft adjacent.
=40. Melbicks Garden & Leisure, Birmingham
£6.9m
Melbicks is one of Garden & Leisure's seven centres and won the Garden Retail Award for best pet and aquatics department in 2008.
42. Ruxley Manor, Sidcup, Kent
£6.75m
Henry Evans founded H Evans & Sons, of Longlands Nursery, Sidcup, in 1876. In 1960 the business bought Ruxley Manor Farm, and opened a garden centre there in 1964. Richard Evans, managing director, started by selling seeds by post. Andrew and James Evans are both fifth-generation family members to be involved in the site.
=43. Hollybush Garden Centre, Wolverhampton
£6.7m
Hollybush Nurseries was established in 1982 as an independent garden centre, family owned and run. It employs 50 full-time and 60 part-time staff. Twelve other businesses are on site.
=43. Aylett Nurseries, St Albans, Hertfordshire
£6.7m
Aylett is more than 50 years old and is now run by garden centre founder Roger Aylett's son-in-law Adam Wigglesworth, who is on the HTA retail committee.
45. Squire's Badshot Lea Garden Centre, West Sussex
£6.6m
The centre was formerly owned by the Caffyn Parsons family. It was taken over by Squire's in 2006. There centre has an aquatic department and café.
Squire's managing director Dennis Espley runs the centres from the Twickenham HQ.
46. Haskins Snowhill, West Sussex
£6.3m
One of the four south-coast Haskins centres, this one has a HobbyCraft on site. Warren Haskins, chairman, is worth more than £40m, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
47. Squire's Twickenham Garden Centre, Middlesex
£6.1m
Colin Squire still chairs the family-owned 11-centre group. Dennis Espley is managing director of the traditional group, which has centres in the affluent South East. Mig Ammola manages the centre.
=48. Stewarts Gardenlands, Christchurch, Dorset
£6m
GCA chairman elect Martin Stewart is managing director of D Stewart & Son, which can trace its business roots back to 1742. His two garden centres, nursery and landscaping businesses employ around 260 people. He has been managing director since 1982.
=48. Dobbies Atherstone Garden World, Warwickshire
£6m
Dobbies has applied for permission to set up allotments at its Atherstone garden centre, near Lichfield, where it is already selling chickens.
=48. Dobbies Stirling Garden World
£6m
With 8ha of landscaped grounds and mazes, it has Scotland's longest maze based on celtic designs. One maze is a medieval-style labyrinth made from purple-and-white heather in the pattern of a St Andrew's cross. The other is a 700m-long hedge maze. It also features an arboretum and has plans to host Scotland's National Rowan Collection.
=48. Blue Diamond St Peters Garden Centre, Jersey
£6m
This is Jersey's biggest centre, and is owned by Guernsey-based Blue Diamond. Originally a fruit exporter and still diversified, Blue Diamond managing director Alan Roper concentrates on department-store level high-retail values.
=52. Dobbies Garden Centre, Sandyholm, Lanarkshire
£5.8m
Sold to Dobbies in April 2008 for £8m, Sandyholm Garden Centre has 4,000sq m of retail space, on a 4ha site. The original centre was created 40 years ago by the Warnock family. David Warnock and his sister Dorothy took over the centre in 1999 and developed a business boasting more than 100 staff, sales of £5.8m and profits of £1.1m.
=52. Houghton Hall Garden Centre, Cumbria
£5.8m
Bob Gault, who founded Klondyke, started small with a Sunday stall at Ingliston market in Edinburgh selling camping gear and seconds sleeping bags. By 1977 he was distributing LPG and bought Kirkintilloch garden centre in 1980, mainly as a distribution centre. He says: "It's been a long, interesting journey. Is there any growth left in garden centres? There will be a degree of consolidation as some centres close."
=52. Haskins Roundstone, West Sussex
£5.8m
Haskins Roundstone is part of the family business started in 1882. The centre is one of four run by Julian Winfield. Warren Haskins now concentrates his time on his HobbyCraft chain of craft centres.
=52. Baytree Nurseries, Lincolnshire
£5.8m
Founded and run by the great plantsman Reinhard Biehler. He recently dropped Dutch orchids for orchids grown by producer V-Flora (UK), just 3km away.
=52. Wyevale Thatcham, Berkshire
£5.8m
Bought with 40 Country Gardens centres in 2000 for £108m, from current CEO Nicholas Marshall.
57. Notcutts Woodford Park, Cheshire
£5.63m
Notcutts bought the site in 2008 as part of a £14.5m of six centres that expanded the Notcutts business to 19 centres.
58. Blooms Rugby Garden Centre, Warwickshire
£5.61m
Built on land formerly owned by garden centre legend Jeffrey Bernhard, now in his late 80s.
Wyevale bought Blooms in 2007 after Blooms bought the land from GCA chairman 1964 Bernhard in 2002.
59. Old Barn Nursery & Garden Centre, West Sussex
£5.25m
Wyevale bought Old Barn Garden Centre, West Sussex, in October 2007 for an undisclosed sum just weeks after Old Barn chairman Graham Spears denied the site was for sale.
60. Shenstone Garden Centre, Staffordshire
£5.15m
One of two centres bought from Fosters Garden Centres in 2001 for £7.6m.
=61. Grosvenor, Chester
£5m
Managing director Iain Wylie is on the HTA retail committee, and Grosvenor is renowned for its events programme, farm shop offering and as a community hub.
=61. Monkton Elm, near Taunton, Somerset
£5m
This is well known for its events programme and pets department as well as its general garden centre offer. The Bellman family developed the site since buying the century-old nursery in 1978.
=61. Redfields, Fleet, Hampshire
£5m
Redfields was founded in 1977 by father-and-son team Roy and Richard Jones. Roy was an agricultural merchant specialising in seeds and fertilisers. Plans are in place for a redevelopment.
=61. RHS Wisley Plant Centre, Surrey
£5m
Commercial manager Gordon Seabright sees RHS Wisley as the jewel of the RHS retail centres. The centre has an authoritative range of plants.
=61. Coolings Garden Centre, Knockholt, Kent
£5m
Garden Retail Award-winning Coolings is renowned in the business for its plants and the enthusiasm of chairman Paul Cooling. He opened his Outdoor Inspiration store, 2km from the original centre, this year.
=61. Dobbies Garden World, Cirencester
£5m
An archetypal new-build Dobbies with the feel of a service station and the shopability to match.
=61. Dobbies Garden World, Chesterfield
£5m
The 5,000sq m Dobbies is an anchor for a 9,000sq m retail complex on a 5ha site, with 4,000sq m of space being let to complementary retailers.
68. Wyevale Hare Hatch, Berkshire
£4.89m
Bought with the acquisition of 13 Kennedys Garden Centres for £13m in 1998. Hare Hatch has moneyed clientele who live in the Thames Valley.
69. Wyevale Woodbridge, Suffolk
£4.67m
The site was bought from Douglas Goldsmith and the garden centre was constructed then opened in 1990.
70. Tong Garden Centre, West Yorkshire
£4.59m
A large independent, Tong Garden Centre boasts a 150-seat café and has a large pet and aquatic department.
71. Trelawney Wadebridge, Cornwall
£4.56m
Owned by a former GCA chairman David Danning, Trelawney garden centre is a Cornish landmark.
Danning also has another centre at Wadebridge and is planning another at Probus Gardens.
72. Millets Farm, West Oxfordshire
£4.53m
This is a second-generation family farm, and it was owned and run by brothers Nigel and Tony Carter before Frosts bought it.
Their father started the process of diversification during the 1970s. It has a mix of farm shop, farm, garden centre and restaurant.
73. Garden Pride, Ditchling, West Sussex
£4.4m
With prominent displays of spas and garden furniture, this centre has also successfully developed web retailing.
=74. Stephen H Smith, Otley, West Yorkshire
£4.5m
A GCA member, this is the largest of the four-centre chain. Others are in Bingley, Scunthorpe and Bolton.
=74. Burston Rose, St Albans
£4.5m
It is located close to the M25 in affluent Hertfordshire.
=74. Paradise Park, East Sussex
£4.5m
Paradise Park serves the affluent Newhaven, East Sussex, market. The centre's USP is its heritage trail and gardens.
Many of the features and models such as dinosaurs and elephants are made by the family owners and staff in the workshops adjoining the premises.
The plant houses contain a collection of the world's flora.
=74. Trago Mills Newton Abbot, Devon
£4.5m
Trago Mills Newton Abbot garden centre is part of a huge retail destination experience in Devon.
The centre has an unusual drive-through aggregates area and extensive terraced landscaped grounds alongside a price-led pound-shop-style supermarket, rides and food court.
78. Wyevale Swansea
£4.35m
The site was leased from Swansea City Council and the garden centre built and opened in 1987.
79. Wyevale Harlestone Heath
£4.32m
Located in Northampton, and managed by Huw Williams, the centre was acquired with Country Gardens during 2000.
80. Wyevale Hereford
£4.23m
Harry Williamson founded the original Wyevale centre in 1953 in Hereford.
Since then, it has moved headquarters to Slough and is changing its name to the Garden Centre Group.
81. Notcutts Wheatcroft
£4.2m
A former NWF centre in Nottingham sold to Notcutts in 2008 from the farmers' supplier in a £14.5m five-centre deal. This move makes Notcutts, now a specialist retailer after selling its nursery and landscape arms, a top-five player in the industry.
82. Armitage's Pennine, West Yorkshire
£4.2m
Established in 1842 as seed merchants, Armitage's Garden Centres is a family-owned business with three sites across Huddersfield.
The garden centres are in Birchencliffe and Shelley. Managing director Will Armitage is a GCA regional representative. Armitage's Mower World & Service Centre, located near Huddersfield town centre, adds to the company's offer.
83. Wyevale Braintree
£4.19m
Bought with Cramphorn Garden Centres in 1991, this is a large destination centre with an aquatics section and gallery area.
84. St Peters, Worcester
£4m plus
Worcester-based St Peters Garden Centre director Tony Blake is a voice in the HTA and GCA. He describes Sunday trading laws as "archaic". The centre is a member of the AIS buying group and has a newly refurbished café.
=85. Perrywood Plant Centre Tiptree, Essex
£4m
Perrywood is a grower/retailer with a redevelopment planned by Malcolm Scott Consultants. The garden centre was founded in the late 1980s.
=85. Gates Nurseries, Leicestershire
£4m
Gates is a nursery and garden centre built in the old Cold Overton Hall. The nursery was founded by Fred and Ivy Gates when they created a market garden in 1948.
=85. Dobbies Garden World Preston
£4m
Preston general manager John Butcher was responsible for the Southport Flower Show gardens, which were based on a working-from-home theme in 2009 with home office, solar lighting, chickens and vegetable patches.
=85. Dobbies Garden World Southport
£4m
This centre features grey-water recycling and wood-burning power.
=85. Dobbies Ponteland
£4m
Dobbies Ponteland centre in Northumberland trebled in size from 1,250sq m to 4,500sq m in 2005 after a rebuild, which was an unusual move for the group, which generally concentrates on new builds.
=85. Dobbies Garden World Dundee
£4m
A purpose-built destination next to Angus Gateway, which is a seven-shop outlet.
=85. Dobbies Garden World Ayr
£4m
Opened in March 2004, Dobbies decided it had most of Scotland covered so turned its attention south of the border.
=85. Woodthorpe, Lincolnshire
£4m
In October 2008, Lincolnshire-based Brigg and Woodthorpe Hall garden centres owner Charles Stubbs bought Arcadia Garden Centre in Middlesbrough. Stubbs recently capitalised on Woolworth's demise by buying some of the chain's shopfittings for a song.
=85. Poplars Nursery Garden Centre, Bedfordshire
£4m
More than 100 years ago Jesse Little founded a nursery in Bedfordshire, later building a nursery for each of his sons, including one at Toddington in 1924.
In 1965 Jesse's grandson John, later a GCA chairman, joined the business, and in 1968 to changed the focus of the business and opened a garden centre as growing salads became less profitable.
The centre is now led by Jesse Little's great-grandson David and great-granddaughter Zoe.
=85. Burleydam, Merseyside
£4m
Burleydam Garden Centre and sister centre Gateacre Garden Centre, both situated in South Merseyside, are part of the EH Williams group.
Burleydam began in 1906. It has been managed for three generations by the Williams family and is currently managed by Sally and Adrian Cornelissen.
=95. Thurrock, Essex
Just under £4m
This centre is close to Lakeside shopping centre in Essex and was founded in 1978. The family-run centre is a member of the HTA and GCA and has won awards at the Chelsea flower show and Hampton Court flower show hanging basket competition.
=95. Podington, Northamptonshire
Just under £4m
Formed in 1976, Podington Garden Centre is a large independent family-run garden centre. It is a GCA and HTA member, with a strong web offering.
=95. Byrkley, Staffordshire
Just under £4m
The centre is at Byrkley Lodge in Staffordshire, which the Bass brewing family built more than a century ago.
The garden centre was built in the walled garden of the demolished house, in 1986.
98. Millbrook, Gravesend, Kent
£3.9m
The Allen family built their first centre in 1979 and followed that a decade later with Millbrook, which is now run by founder and former GCA chairman Sue Allen's daughter Tammy Woodhouse.
Millbrook in Gravesend is set for a Malcolm Scott-designed redevelopment built by independent garden centre favourite builder Geo Hodges.
The café turns over £500,000 while the rest of the centre is a masterclass in ranging and presentation.
99. Lady Green, Merseyside
£3.8m
Klondyke snapped up Lady Green in March 2008 from owner Philip Allison through Hammond Phillips. Opened in 1986 and set in 4ha of landscaped grounds, the centre has won the GCA's Ruxley Rose award for best outdoor planteria.
100. Planters Tamworth, Staffordshire
£3.6m
Owned by retailer Gerard Ingram, Planters Garden Centre has been trading since 1990 after starting as a small roadside affair.
Ingram is a straight-talking businessman who has developed a licensed restaurant seating 180. He stocks a wide variety of goods, from clothes lines to dining room suites.
The site extended its pet department in January 2008 and its Ripples Waterlife area in 2009.
For the geographical distribution of these stores, see the Garden Retail map of the top 100 garden centres.
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