Bay Landscapes and Garden Centre at Three Brothers Corner in Richmond is on the move so Foodstuffs South Island can prepare the land for future development.
Foodstuffs South Island has consent for a New World supermarket on the site.
General manager for retail and property, Tim Donaldson, confirmed the land would be prepared for future development, however, he said there were no further updates about the proposed supermarket at this point.
The consent expires in March this year, which means the consent needs to be activated to retain it.
The company has owned the site on the corner of Bateup Rd and Gladstone Rd since 2007 and revealed its plans for a New World supermarket six years later. In 2014 the Tasman District Council approved the rezoning of the 1.64 hectares of land from residential to commercial and in 2016 granted consent for a 4,000 square metre supermarket and two retail tenancies.
Three years ago, Foodstuffs South Island said the development timetable for the supermarket was being reviewed due to the economic conditions associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now it is developing the site and Bay Landscapes and Garden Centre is moving to Artillery Place on the east side of Lower Queen St.
Bill and Leslie Norriss have been operated Bay Landscapes and Garden Centre on 5,000 square metres of the Foodstuff’s site since 2005, initially as a landscape business beside the former Bay Nurseries which closed down for a period. They kickstarted the garden centre in 2014 to work alongside their landscape business and Bill says the combination has worked well.
“It has been quite magical.”
Their daughter Jasmin Costello is now in charge of the business and will be the face of the business at their new site, especially when Bill and Leslie retire this year.
Bill says they have always operated the business at Three Brothers Corner with the knowledge they would have to move on when their landlord, Foodstuffs, required the land. For 15 years they have leased the site on a month-by-month basis and hence they were given about six-weeks to vacate the site. In the meantime, work has already begun around the business to clear Foodstuff’s site.
Their last day of business is February 12 and the family is preparing for the major exercise of shifting a garden centre and landscape business to a smaller site.
Artillery Place will not be the high-profile site they have enjoyed at Three Brothers Corner, but they are confident their customers will follow them to their new address.
When they restarted the garden centre in 2014, Leslie says they knew little about gardening and much has been learnt from their customers over the years.
“We only had about 10 plants when we started at the garden centre. We didn’t know one from the other. But now we love it – love the customers and we’ve learnt a lot from them.”
Compost and potting mixes are made on site and some of the fertilisers mixed by Bill follow the original recipes left by the Thorn family who owned the garden centre for decades.
Jasmin says it will be business as usual at Artillery Place, including the pick-your-own vegetable seedlings. Customers dig out their own seedlings and wrap them in newspaper and she says it enables people with smaller gardens to pick and choose a few vegetables to grow rather than buy a whole punnet of each vegetable.
“It is really popular, and it is a good point of difference for the business.”
She says more and more people are trying to be self-sustainable with their own vegetables and she wants to make it easier for them to achieve their goal. The younger generations are increasingly interested in growing their own vegetables, while many of their customers are in their 30s and landscaping new easy-care gardens around a new build.
Once the business is transferred to its new site, she plans to use technology more so customers can book landscape deliveries online.
By Anne Hardie.
