To celebrate it’s 25th Birthday, we’re handing the blog over to Simpsons Garden Centre! With nurserymen and florists in the family since the late 1880’s, it no wonder this amazing family business continues to thrive today. Read more below:
After taking inspiration from his dad, grandfather, great grandfather and great-great grandfather who were all nurserymen, owner Andrew Simpson began his journey into the industry in the early 1990’s when he helped his mum Kathleen revive the Simpsons family market garden and nursery in Beauly.
The nursery and market garden was taken over by Andrew’s dad Gordon in the early 1960’s before expending into Simpsons Florists in Inverness in 1970. The florists then moved to the Victorian Market and latterly here at Simpsons – where nursery and florists came together once again!
Simpsons Garden Centre / nursery first opened it’s doors on 6th April 2000, as a seasonal garden centre with a polytunnel growing hanging basket and bedding plants. The original 1.5 acre site had 2 members of staff, a portacabin office and 14 car spaces. The rest as they say is history…
Simpsons has certainly grown since 2000 and now has a 260-cover award winning restaurant, 150 team members over two garden centres and 260 car parking spaces!
Despite the challenges faced by the retail and hospitality sectors, the team have pulled together and are working hard to continue creating an excellent shopping and hospitality experience for our customers. In the garden centre, our team work tirelessly to ensure they are sourcing the best quality products at the best price for our customers, and in the restaurants, the top priority is finding the best quality and seasonal ingredients for our menus, keeping the supply chain as local as possible.
As ever, we are always looking for new ways to enhance the shopping experience at Simpsons. We have introduced new seasonal menus in our restaurants where customers can expect and enjoy great quality and standard of food and drinks, no matter which garden centre they visit.
In March we welcomed Lakeland on site, a fantastic business collaboration, with very similar brand values and customer base to Simpsons. We look forward to working with their team to create a fantastic customer experience from start to finish. Feedback from customers so far has been excellent and the new store is attracting new customers for both brands.
As part of our 25th birthday year, we are excited to be launching a new loyalty app. This will be launching very soon and will allow us to give back to our loyal customers. We’ve researched our offering thoroughly and expect high sign up and integration across our stores.
Community is very important to Simpsons, and as part of our birthday year, we launched our £25,000 garden project fund to support school, charity and community gardens in our local area. The application process is now closed, and we look forward to announcing the recipients very soon. We were blown away by the fantastic gardens and projects in our local community and will be proud to support as many projects as possible.
In 2023, we installed over 300 PV solar modules onto the main garden centre and restaurant roof area, generating up to 100KW per hour. This energy contributes to the daily energy requirements of the garden centre, greatly reducing our carbon footprint.
In one year alone we saved over 18,000kg in CO2 emissions, the equivalent of planting 1,092 trees. In future, it’s hoped that we will extend and enhance the energy saving projects on site.
We continually strive to meet and exceed our customer expectations when visiting our garden centres. Our foodhall/deli shop within the garden centre is no exception, with a focus on stocking many local and Highlands and Islands producers. We were delighted last year to be shortlisted for the Best Independent Retailer at the Highlands and Islands Food and Drinks Awards. It wasn’t our year as overall winner; however this will only strengthen our aim to be one of the best supplier of local and Highland produced products in the area.
Highland businesses come together to form a unique community, supporting each other through everything the financial climate throws at us. The Chamber offers a great support network with our fellow Highland businesses. Not only does this give us the opportunity to explore excellent collaboration opportunities but allows us to expand and develop existing relationships.
Our top tip for fellow Chamber members is to get involved in Chamber events, as its a great way to network within the Highland Business community.
From Highland Business Week and Awards to lunches, workshops and networking events, there’s something for everyone. The recent introduction of under 30’s events has been a great opportunity for our younger team members to attend.
Last year our florists exhibited at the Highland Business Week event at the Drummosie Hotel. It was a super opportunity not only for this part of the business but allowed our team to discuss our corporate services across the garden centre from the florists to providing indoor plants for office space and stunning planters and showstopping plants for external space to corporate hampers from our foodhall/deli.
Even if you don’t want to exhibit at Highland Business week, we would recommend attending and meeting many of the locally businesses on your doorstep.
Photo Credit: Callum Mackay of HNM