Burford Garden Company is billed as a garden centre but it is not that, exactly. The sprawling, 21,000sq m complex off the A40 route to the Cotswolds sells perennials and bulbs, but it also houses a bookshop, children’s boutique, a warren of rooms dedicated to foodstuffs, wine, clothes, contemporary art and homewares, and an excellent café and bakery decorated in the French brocante style. It’s the kind of place you might go for a shrub rose and leave with a Margaret Howell shirt, a tin of Perello olives and a birthday present for your three-year-old niece.
Fifty years ago, the site was a 17-acre “field with chicken sheds”, recalls owner Nigel Johnson, sitting in a booth in a private dining area behind the café. He and his father acquired the land to service their commercial landscaping business, and started growing and selling plants to the public on the side. “Then Louise turned up –” he gestures to his wife of 35 years, a former nurse “– and we began adding more and more products alongside the plants.”
The Glasshouse Café © Burford Garden Co
A selection of dishes at Glasshouse Café © Burford Garden Co
People think a garden centre is not chic. They don’t get it until they come here
