AMY RUSS
A stalwart in the landscape and gardening community for 17 years, Bay Landscapes and Garden Centre have moved to an exciting new site on Artillery Place off Lower Queen Street.
Owners Bill and Leslie Norriss, along with their daughter and the new face of the business, Jasmin Costello, look forward to bringing in an even bigger variety of plants to choose from and hopefully a few more different and unique options. “I want our shop to be full of a big range of beautiful plants to inspire and make people happy, and introduce more sustainable options for our business,” says manager Jasmin. “We will keep our great prices and site-made products. Our new location has a loading area for bulk landscape supplies and a drive-through shop. I love that we make a lot of our own product like liquid fertilisers, composts and potting mix, and source most of our other product locally. We on grow our plants too, so that means they are climatised and hardened, ready for local growing conditions. We will focus of reusing and upcycling where we can to reduce unnecessary waste, and our aim is to bring in reusable bags for our potting mixes and gravels and biodegradable pots for our plants.”
Reflecting on the years that have been, Bay Landscapes and Garden Centre is very much a family business, with every member of the immediate family having worked there at some stage, says Jasmin. “We have many memories revolving around it, and we are so happy to be at the stage where we can hold onto the business with relocating instead of shutting up shop.” Introducing more of an online presence with a comprehensive website is in the pipeline, which will include the ability to book deliveries online. “I want to really get the word of our business out there, it’s so special and unique in what it offers, and we have a great team of long-time staff who make coming to work a pleasure and create that friendly down to earth environment that we have.”
In the beginning, Bill and Leslie operated the centre largely as a landscaping business before kickstarting the garden side of things in 2014, and growing operations to what it is today. “When the nursery went out of business eight years ago, the site looked like it had been abandoned, and my parent’s landscape supplies business suffered as a result. They decided to grow their business to include a retail nursery, hired new staff, and this is when things started to really take off. There has been a lot of learning starting up a retail nursery, but we have learnt a lot, much of which from trial and error and a lot from very knowledgeable customers and staff.”
Being based on a leased development site, the family are very much looking forward to the future security at the new Richmond location.“My parents have known of the potential development of the Bateup road site for 15 years now. They have been on a month-by-month lease the entirety of that time. It will be such a relief not to have the potential of ‘one month left’ at our new site. It’s been a daily part of our business and in every decision we made we had to consider that we might not be at the site for much longer. It might take us awhile to realise we don’t have that hanging over us anymore, it has been such a long time coming! My parents are so resilient, and I’m just amazed by their positive outlook, hard work and business smarts. They have built such a solid business by being themselves, they are so genuine and quite hilarious in their interactions with each other and customers. We have some very loyal, long-time regular shoppers and they just love them.”
Jasmin thrives on hard work and a passion for the outdoors saying, “Seeing the difference a day in the garden can make for your wellbeing and the sense of accomplishment it creates, growing your own food and reaping the rewards, that's what drives my passion for the business. I love hearing of our customers successes and I love it even more when they bring the produce instore, home-grown food is the best food!”
Officially opening on Saturday, February 18th, Bays Landscapes and Garden Centre will be celebrating with 20% off everything - and Bill on the BBQ doing a sausage sizzle. They look forward to welcoming everyone to their new location and continuing to provide the same friendly service that locals have enjoyed for many years.
Bays Landscapes and Garden Centre, 38 Artillery Place, Richmond
