The Blue Diamond Awards at Athena, Leicester

The Blue Diamond annual awards were held last night at Athena in Leicester, where hundreds of staff from our 42 garden centres attended.

Managing Director, Alan Roper, said Blue Diamond would become the number one turnover garden centre group this year at £330m, ahead of Dobbies, up from £269m in 2022.

He said Blue Diamond is not a company but rather a place about people: "What makes a company strong and successful is people".

Blue Diamond bought Van Hage's three centres in 2022 and Roper paid tribute to the founding family.

We also announced at Easter, that we will add two centres with £18m turnover to the group, one in the Cotswolds area and one towards East Anglia.

Alan spoke of "headwinds" and mitigating increasing costs. He said other businesses will fail in the next year or two and you need to act now against inflation. 

Fashion and pets performed the best in 2022. Margin was around 45-46% and ex-Wyevale centres can improve that, with customer numbers down -4% since 2019 but average spend up £7 to around £33, well ahead of GCA average numbers.

Capex in 2022 of £11.5m included work at Newbridge, Sanders, Bicester, Wilton, Springfield, Melbicks and Mere Park.

Award Winners

Garden Centre of the Year

Acorn – Brambridge Park

Oak – Grosvenor

Restaurant of the Year

Acorn – Nailsworth

Oak – Cardiff

Food Retailer of the year

Acorn – Jo Nicholls, Cardiff

Oak – Shared by Michelle Richardson, Trentham & Jane Glanville, Endsleigh

Kipling of the Year

Bicester

Hosts for the evening, Daniella Corizza, Alan Roper and Peter Gibbons

The Home Awards

1920s Entertainment

Nailsworth - Acorn Restaurant of the Year

More entertaining

Oak garden centre of the year - Grosvenor