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Bosworth’s Garden Centre is bringing back its coach trips due to popular demand

Bosworth’s Garden Centre really does go the extra mile for its customers. On 7 May, it has organised for a coach trip to take customers from its shop in Kettering to the RHS Malvern Spring Festival at the Three Counties Showground in Worcestershire. t s the rst of a series of a coach trips that the garden centre is providing this year, with BBC Gardeners’ World Live booked for June, Sandringham Flower Show for July, and a beach day in Hunstanton planned for August.

It’s been two years since Bosworth’s Garden Centre has been able to organise its popular coach trips. hey rst e an when current owner Sam Bosworth’s parents were running the store, having taken over from his grandparents who rst founded the usiness. a s u started to put together the trips to enable customers to visit events they might not be able to otherwise.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, the events the garden centre had planned to attend were cancelled. “It threw a lot of things out of place and it’s only now starting to come back,” says Jonathan Biggs, Bosworth’s marketing and technology manager. “We would have liked to have started the coach trips last year, but we could only sell every other seat and it just wasn’t viable. Now all the restrictions have stopped, we’ll hopefully get back to full coaches again.”

There tends to be a core group of people who attend each trip, but they are available to anyone, not just customers. The schedule is advertised on the garden centre’s website and social media, as well as via a brochure in store, and those interested can book and pay for their place through an online booking system. It potentially attracts new business for the garden centre. “Some people who come on the coach trips have probably not been to the garden centre before, so although the coach trips often start before the garden centre opens and come back after it shuts, they are then aware of us and will likely come in at some point.”

Bringing in customers is not the reason Bosworth’s organises these coach trips, though. “It’s something for the community. We make a little bit of money on it ut it doesn t a e a assi e pro t. It’s something that people enjoyed when the current owner’s mum used to run them and something people still ask for now. It’s about the community and providing something alongside the usual gardening services that we offer.”

Jonathan says that the garden centre has built a good relationship with a local coach company to enable it to offer the trips, and contacts each of the events it plans to

attend to enquire as to when the tickets will be released, ready for group bookings. On the day of the event, passengers are checked on to the coach and the event tickets handed out.

For this year, Bosworth’s has started with four events to gauge interest, but as they seem to be booking well, Jonathan says they will continue to plan them for the rest of the year, with the garden centre wanting to bring back events in-house too, such as a children’s club it ran pre-pandemic.

Coach trips might take time and effort to organise, but the value to customers and the local community is invaluable, and it could make a garden centre stand out from the crowd. ◗

It’s about the community and providing something alongside the usual gardening services that we offer