PLANTS Galore have just opened its fourth garden plant supermarket – this time near Martock, Yeovil – just off the A303.

The new centre is located on Plants Galore’s own nursery, which at 14 acres, is one of the largest Bedding Plant and Hanging Basket nurseries in the South West and provides Plants Galore garden plant supermarkets exclusively with millions of homegrown flowering plants.

The nursery has an automated production line and specialist propagation facilities plus a nine-acre computer-controlled glasshouse.

Co-owner Tony Joyner said: “We specialise in growing millions of seedlings and cuttings at our Somerset nurseries near Martock.

“This means we can miss out on the middleman garden centre and sell our garden plants direct to the public at half the normal garden centre price.

“It’s a proven successful business model with our three huge stores in Devon now turning over £10 million and we can now offer Somerset customers and Somerset businesses the chance to buy the very best quality homegrown garden plants - at half the price.

“Being able to grow your own plants also brings other advantages. We can also offer a comprehensive range of plants with unique colours as we control the growth and can select the very best seed and cutting varieties that we know perform best for our customers.

“We have been very successful with Yeovil Christmas Tree Centre over the years selling tens of thousands of Christmas Trees and have opened the Yeovil nurseries at seasonal times to the public, but we have now created a beautiful permanent garden plant store which will be open every day and packed full of stunning plants and a great range of garden sundries.

Plants Galore expect to increase its employees to over 100 with this latest expansion.

“This is great news for the local Somerset economy – we can cut the cost of gardening for the Somerset public and also provide employment and over £1 million investment in the Somerset area.

“We are a family business based in Totnes Devon since 1959.
In 2010 we moved our growing operation to our nurseries at Martock near Yeovil and have continued to transform our business every year since then.

“We hope in time to be able to offer schools and horticultural societies a tour of our nursery, showing the process from how plants are grown all the way through to being sold in our stores.

“We want to allow the general public a behind-the-scenes look at large-scale commercial horticulture and how it is becoming more automated with robotics and technology.

“It would be great to offer the Somerset public and tourism industry refreshments and access to one of the biggest nurseries in the Southwest. Like visiting Cadbury World but for garden plants.”

Find Plants Galore Yeovil (between Martock and Ash) Foldhill Lane, TA12 6PD – www.growndirect.co.uk – Facebook @PlantsGaloreSW & @YeovilPlantsGalore