Stephens Scown’s leisure and tourism team has helped a Barnstaple garden centre expand its business.
At the end of last year our client, St John’s Garden Centre in Barnstaple bought the Wyevale Garden Centre at Ashford. The site was up for sale as part of the selloff of the entire UK portfolio of Wyevale Garden Centres. The 148 garden centres owned by Terra Firma under the Wyevale Garden Centres brand are a mix of freehold and leasehold and are being sold off individually, giving smaller operators like our client a chance to expand.
The Stephens Scown team included head of leisure and tourism Toby Pool, along with Laura McFadyen, who advised on employment issues. Simon Morris from our corporate team and Jamie Bartlett from real estate team also worked on the deal. Stephens Scown also advised Lloyds Bank who provided the funding.
Toby Pool said: “The best part of my job is helping clients to grow and expand their businesses. I’m sure the fantastic team at St John’s Garden Centre will make a huge success of this new venture.”
At the time of the deal, Nick Oliver from St John’s Garden Centre said: “We will make improvements to all parts of the centre, starting with the restaurant and bringing a similar offering of food and fare as we would at St John’s Lane. We are pleased to be extending our reward card scheme into this store as well.”
Commenting on how things are going he said: “Now we are nearly 12 months down the road, the Ashford Garden Centre has been out performing our trading forecasts by a very large margin and we appreciate the work that Toby and his team at Stephens Scown did in getting all the details right.”