Multi-award-winning Devon garden centre Fermoy's has kick-started plans for a major re-development and expansion of its business.
The garden centre, which is in Ipplepen, near Newton Abbot, has applied for outline planning permission for a multi-million-pound project that would deliver a new, larger store, a much-expanded cafe and a new car park.

Fermoy's was voted Britain's Best UK Garden Retailer in the DIY Week Awards three years running - 2010, 2011 and 2012. It's an outstanding achievement, but all the more so considering the challenging conditions under which the business operates.

The garden centre has developed sporadically over the years, evolving from its original purpose as a fabric-roofed plant growing area and having a collection of
buildings added to it on an ad-hoc basis.

"Our main building is a polytunnel, and it's baking hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter," director Alan Murdoch told diyweek.net. It also requires constant maintenance and is very noisy during heavy rainfall, hail and strong winds.

"We've also got a car park that's got a slope on it and a shop floor that's got a slope on it, which is very trying for customers," he went on. "All our trolleys have to have brakes."

In addition, the car park can be difficult to navigate and there is a lack of disabled spaces and poor drop-off areas for coaches.

"So we've got all of those problems to overcome, and we've been working on a new plan now for several years," said Mr Murdoch.

Its basis is an additional five-acre site which the business acquired some four years ago. Fermoy's wants to build a new garden centre on the land alongside the existing centre, allowing it to remain open whilst construction is taking place. Once the new building was complete, the old ones would be demolished and become part of a new car parking area.

The plan would deliver 25% more internal sales area, which Mr Murdoch expects would allow the business to consider new product categories. "But that's something we'll look at when we get into detailed planning," he said. "The cafe's also going to be increased considerably, more than doubled from 180 seats to 400."

He said the project would create 30 new jobs and cost between £3m and £6m. "There could be quite a wide variation, depending on what materials we use."

Outline planning will take 16 weeks before, if successful, moving to the detailed stage, but Mr Murdoch said the date of the relaunch depended on the state of the economy. "But things are slowly showing signs of improvement; we had a reasonable year this year."