Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Shannons in Forest Hill is great. A family run business with huge stock. It is bigger then the ED one used to be and bigger then CP or WD. Def recommend it! Easy to get to (7 mins) and you can park if you want to buy loads or hop on the 185 if getting something small/having delivered.

Newboy Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> There's a great family run independent garden

> centre called Alexander Nurseries in Sydenham.

> Great plants and you can have a coffee too! Close

> to Penge East station


It's great but definitely in Penge, though on the borders with Sydenham. #PostcodeWars ;)

So we'll have a very large Sainsbury's with a Morrisons close by, a Tescos just past Goose Green a Co-op and Iceland/M&S further along and then another Sainsbury's up the hill. I too wish we'd had another garden centre. Yet another example of a mixture of branded supermarkets presenting the illusion of choice.
Never mind the Garden Centre, which frankly wasn't great to start with, it's the demolishing of part of our station building that's disturbing me! It's part of the area's heritage and should have had protected status, with Waitrose forced to make do with it as is if they want to open a store there.

When the Garden Centre site was sold (which, no doubt, was a good deal for the site owner) the plans for the use of the site (library, shop, apartments) would not have left sufficient space for a full garden centre - needing both indoor and outdoor space - at best it would have left sufficient space for a large flower shop which also sold tools, pots & chemicals (i.e. the former 'shop' bit of the Garden Centre.) So Morrison's use of the space wouldn't have been 'instead of' a full garden centre.


Having M&S, Sainbury's, Morrisons and Tesco trading 'against' each other should be to the benefit of ED customers - competition generally does benefit customers.


Sadly, around ED the relatively small size (and relatively high value) of commercial sites means that a 'good' garden centre footprint will be hard to find/ cost justify any longer. For those who can, travelling slightly further to get to better/ bigger centres will prove OK - but of course, those without transport or ready access to transport will suffer.


For bulky items (gravel, compost etc.) some firms will deliver, thus to some extent offsetting this problem.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Latest Discussions

    • Well I did say I stand to be corrected! Fair enough, their website only seemed to list three branches. Perhaps it's a franchise model?  It's known as 'agglomeration' in economics Rookie error.
    • I didn't know there was a word for that — thanks!
    • This is just normal business behaviour. That's why there are so many coffee shops in ED and shops selling gifts and interiors stuff, clothes, restaurants.  If there's more than one business of a similar type then it can benefit all of them up to a saturation point and keep up quality. It's all sounding like many think Chango has made a malicious move when it actually sounds like it's owned by one guy who has a good business that has done well.   Anyway this is all great advertising for both empanada places. Very close by is the organic grocer who sells really good value and very tasty samosas and other Indian snacks which are also worth trying. 
    • Hello, Does this lovely little panther have a name? & Is he neutered & microchipped?
Home
Events
Sign In

Sign In



Or sign in with one of these services

Search
×
    Search In
×
×
  • Create New...