With work set to begin on creating a new garden centre in the south west, its owners are promising that the finished article will "attract people from all over the UK".

Trelawney Garden Leisure will start on the first phase of its new destination garden centre, restaurant and display gardens at Probus, near Truro in Cornwall, in March. It will be the third centre for Trelawney, which already runs Trelawney@Wadebridge in Cornwall and Trelawney@Ashford in North Devon.

The 11-acre business is expected to create 80 full- and part-time jobs and to have a major impact on the area's economy.

David Danning, director and owner of Trelawney along with David Symons, said: "We're delighted to be getting the project finally underway and aim to have it open in the autumn. The garden centre at Probus is an amazing project and we're very excited about it.

"Trelawney@Probus will be a gardening-related leisure destination and a centre of excellence for Cornwall. With the development of demonstration gardens it will offer the visitor so much more to see and do than a traditional garden centre might. It will attract people from all over the UK."

Trelawney says that the new centre's impact on the environment has been given a great deal of thought, and the site will use the latest technology to manage internal conditions in the buildings.

The impact of the buildings will also be reduced by nestling the site into the hillside, working with the gradient.

Trelawney announced yesterday that former Garden Centre Association chairman and regional manager with The Garden Centre Group, Peter Burks, has been appointed general manager there, in charge of the two existing centres.