Waterside Garden Centre's Heritage
From Humble beginnings...
Andy Parrott and Alan Walters, original partners in Waterside Garden Centre, used to be just a couple of gardening nuts. They lived on the same road in Bourne, both kept allotments on the same site and were members of a local football team.
“We both had greenhouses and just grew everything we could”, says Andy. “We were soon supplying the whole street with our vegetables, for example huge bags of broad beans for £1.00. It did start to get a bit out of hand at one time”
The pair became firm friends and over the digging and after the match their thoughts often turned to starting a business together. For Andy, 20 years a toolmaker working at Molins in Peterborough, and Alan, a technical librarian for Fiat-Allis in Stamford, a garden centre and nursery might have seemed a long shot but they were fanatical about gardening and decided that as they gained in expert knowledge their enthusiasm would carry them through.
They began looking for a suitable site and found an old cress bed nursery a few hundred yards from the current garden centre which had been a thriving business a quarter of a century earlier employing 25 people. Cress was despatched across the country from Bourne station, but the site was now derelict and although several people had tried and failed to grow at the site, it was ideal for two men with ambition.
“We both had greenhouses and just grew everything we could”, says Andy. “We were soon supplying the whole street with our vegetables, for example huge bags of broad beans for £1.00. It did start to get a bit out of hand at one time”
The pair became firm friends and over the digging and after the match their thoughts often turned to starting a business together. For Andy, 20 years a toolmaker working at Molins in Peterborough, and Alan, a technical librarian for Fiat-Allis in Stamford, a garden centre and nursery might have seemed a long shot but they were fanatical about gardening and decided that as they gained in expert knowledge their enthusiasm would carry them through.
They began looking for a suitable site and found an old cress bed nursery a few hundred yards from the current garden centre which had been a thriving business a quarter of a century earlier employing 25 people. Cress was despatched across the country from Bourne station, but the site was now derelict and although several people had tried and failed to grow at the site, it was ideal for two men with ambition.
“We had a Dutch-style greenhouse and started to grow bedding in a very amateurish way”, explained Andy “Then we used to carry it to the top of the road to sell from the roadside. We did some landscaping too”.The pair left their full time jobs in 1985 to concentrate on their business and soon got the turnover to £70,000. The early days were not without their pitfalls though, Andy arrived late one morning to find Alan pinned between a tractor and trailer that had become unhooked and on another occasion, he fell through the roof of the greenhouse. They remained undaunted however, and sought help in running their business from the government agency ADAS and discovered things they had not considered before, such as the importance of using the right packaging materials.
Alan took control of the landscaping side while Andy concentrated on developing the roadside retail trade into a wholesale business, but within a few years they were itching to expand and open a full size garden centre. Plans for a piece of land nearer to Bourne fell through and eventually the present site became available, although initially they felt it was larger than they really wanted.
Much of the building work was undertaken by themselves and as well as the main build there were other unexpected jobs to be completed under the terms of the planning permission – altering the A15/King Street junction and building an entrance bridge across the drainage dyke as well as sinking a borehole to access water for the plants. 
After final preparations that lasted well into the night Waterside Garden Centre opened for business on 18th March 1990.
Extensions were made to the existing buildings and by 1992 the garden centre was completed to their original plans.
Further expansion and improvements followed, including laying the car parks and outdoor plant area to tarmac, new toilet blocks and raising floor levels to prevent the annual flash floods that plagued the site.
In 2006 Alan decided to retire and Andy continued in the driving seat over-seeing the transition to a limited company and further developments of the site.
The coffee shop and restaurant area, which has already undergone three renovations, has recently been improved further with the aim of reducing waiting times for customers and working towards a first-class service of exceptional food. Efforts have also been made to provide a more relaxed atmosphere in which to enjoy a meal or a snack. Wherever possible locally sourced produce is used and the aim is to add more of these to the menu in future.
The most recent and literally revolutionary improvement has been to enclose the outdoor plant area under a retractable ‘Wimbledon’ - style roof that allows customers to browse plants and composts uninterrupted by the rain and wind.
Waterside Garden Centre is now firmly established as one of the best for many miles around and although by no means resting on his laurels, Andy takes much pride in what has been achieved.
“It was tough at the start, in a difficult economic climate, but the hard work has paid off and all the stresses and strains were worthwhile in the end”.
“It was tough at the start, in a difficult economic climate, but the hard work has paid off and all the stresses and strains were worthwhile in the end”.
