Christmas week and scams

With Christmas in the middle of this week we are rushing around selling the last of our Xmas trees and decorations.
Its sad to say that Christmas brings out the worse in some people, and other are of full of good cheer.
We seem to have been the target along with other garden centres of a local scam where people have been posing as a local business then passing fraudulent cheques. They appear to have been targeting the New Forest area and scamming goods to the value of £200. This leads to us having to put further controls on legitimate trade customers just because of a minority section of the public.
Fortunately we have a good security system so at least we can help the police with their investigations.
Anyhow away with the bad the feelings and in with the good.
Last week we were able to help a customer who feel very ill onsite with getting the emergancy services here quickly. We had an ambulance here fairly quickly but more excitiement came when the air ambulance landed on our neighbours front lawn much to their amazement.
It was good to hear that the casulty is now making a speedy recovery having had an operation as soon as he got to the hospital. It is great when people come back and let us know what is going on

Christmas is coming

With only a 14 days left to shop for Christmas we are starting to see the panic look in peoples eyes. Christmas trees are selling well and I have to say this year the quality is exceptional. We have sourced our trees from Scotland this year from plantations that we have visited in the past and this year they are the best trees we have ever had.
Pot plants are pouring into the centre almost daily and interestingly in the gift area as soon as we have gift wrapped items they have been taken off the shelves. We of course do not charge for the gift wrapping service unlike many of the other garden centres, we also make up garden and wildlife hampers for the customers who want to choose.
We are also putting together our promotional calender for 2009 so do keep a check on the web-site to see up and coming events, we have some really good ones planned for next year.
Tonight is our staff dinner and all the staff from our nursery,garden centre and Learning garden are coming to the Hungry gardener Cafe where we will be plying them with good food and drink, so be gentle with them on Friday there may be a few sore heads around.

Nursery website

I have recently been suffering with the dreaded man-flu and have been confined to home. So rather than just mope around feeling sorry for myself I have turned on my Mac and got the nursery website up together. You can now access the nursery website either via the garden centre site or following this link www.fairweathers.co.uk/nursery/
Some of the areas are restricted to trade customers but all the plant information and general details about the nursery are there at your disposal, so do go and have a look. We will be adding more and more as time goes on or if this flu goes on I will keep adding information.
Sad news today to see that the great Norfolk Lavender company is in financial trouble see http://www.lynnnews.co.uk/news/Jobs-go-as-Norfolk-Lavender.4763977.jp we were suppliers to them for many years from our nursery and feel very sorry for them at present.

Christmas trees

We now have all our Christmas Trees stocks in. We have freshly cut needlefast trees from Scotland and locally grown trees that are grwoing in their own pots.
With the drop in VAt these trees are cheaper than they were from us last year so make the most of it.
We also have variuos tree holders, we recommend these as you can keep water in them to keep the tree fresh and with these cold nights the tree is in for a bit of shock when you put it up in your centrally heated warm abode.
Also this year for every tree sold we are pledging a new tree to one of three local charities more details can be found on our web-site http://www.fairweathers.co.uk/?men=1&sub=1

Pledge Day

On Wednesday Beaulieu School came over to the Learning Garden and helped plant the first fruit tree. We planted a pear tree and on this tree the school placed pledges that they made. We are aiming to keep these pledges available for all to see until the spring.
Do come along and read the children's pledge.



This is the start of our fruit tree planting, now that we have about 20 tons of manure on site we can get the ground properly prepared ready for a good establishment of the trees.