Yarnton Home & Garden, Oxford

Established and run as an independent family run business some 50 plus years previously, the brief for the new VM team at Yarnton Home & Garden was to create a new look destination centre which would increase its appeal to a wider customer base, ideally to attract a younger family demographic whilst retaining the all-important current loyal customers and garden-based business. Tall order!

With a huge Blue Diamond Garden Centre – (the second largest garden centre group in the UK and Channel Islands) 15 minutes up the road in Bicester, and several high-end Garden centres in the Cotswolds, which all do what they do very successfully, we knew as a small independent, we had to establish ourselves with a progressive new USP.

Having inherited a very masculine grey and black urban inspired retail space, myself and my VM team took the opportunity to embrace change, taking inspiration for the ‘look and feel’ for the refurbishment from our brand- new state of the art Play Barn - the ‘Magic Garden’

By using the more usual ‘natural’ rural rustic look as a theme with appropriate placement rather than the overall scheme, we developed a lighter contemporary feel for the store based on our more urban location closer to Oxford, rather than the open farmland of the Cotswolds, and this gave us our point of difference.

Story Telling is Key: One of the most challenging and enjoyable aspects of our work is to re-invent what fixtures we have: – particularly at a time when the world is looking to repurpose and recycle. Addressing environmental concerns and sourcing new sustainable products is a core message for the business.

Our visual presentation had to clearly reflect the changes too, and it has been particularly interesting to see, and monitor, the reaction to a more contemporary style of VM, working with both traditional garden centre products along with the more design-led products we were starting to introduce.

Nearly three years on, we have just about completed the daunting task of re-inventing the shop floor (on two levels), undertaking a major refit of the 250+ cover café and restaurant, refurbishing a busy Plant area, building a new ‘Garden Room’ for outdoor living, and now with the demise in February of the last of the concession based fashion businesses, have recently introduced a brand new 5000 sq.ft Home & Lifestyle section. This has not only really helped us to establish our mixed product offer for the centre, but also our own ‘eclectic’, colourful and contemporary style of VM, which we aim to keep consistent throughout the store.

This award- winning Centre is now gaining recognition in the industry and the VM Team, Jo Simonds and Jason Brown have recently been elected as Associate Members of the British Display Society and Celia Leeson-Cox, in recognition of her years of experience becomes a Fellow.

Celia Leeson-Cox VM Manager