NEWS EXTRA
BENTS CELEBRATES 80 YEARS
A family-run business, with humble beginnings, Bents has innovated and grown over the years to become a leading UK garden centre that has developed to meet changing consumer needs but still keeps plants at its heart. Fiona Garcia met father and son Ron and Matthew Bent
B
ents celebrates its 80th anniversary this year – and how far it has come in that time, from selling roses grown in a front garden, to
a village shop in the front of the Bent family home, and now a huge centre turning over £20 million a year. Managing director Matthew Bent is the third generation of the family to run the business, taking over from his father, Ron, in 2000. As part of the anniversary celebrations, DIY Week was given a tour of the latest phase in Bent’s redevelopment of the site, which includes new retail departments, a food hall, complete with butchers and tapas bar, as well as stunning new offices and staff facilities and an extended car park with roundabout system. The third and final phase of
this major re-development has already been announced and will see the Bents create a two-storey high glazed entrance atrium, with escalators leading up to more retail, leisure and educational space. Bents Garden & Home, wants to be a one-stop shop for visitors and aims to provide consumers with a “quality alternative to large- scale shopping centres”. And, with six eateries, a jurassic-themed adventure golf course, indoor beach, and clothing, homewares and children’s retail departments, it is one impressive destination centre. However, don’t be fooled into thinking the business isn’t still serious about plants and gardening. “Although we’re a big business and we sell millions of other things, plants are still at the heart of the business and that’s why they’re in the middle of the centre,” explained
Ron Bent. “The whole centre has been designed round the plant area. We want people to see the plants and that’s why we don’t mix anything in with them. Plants are the focus.”
Back to its roots
The business was first established in 1937 when Ron’s parents Alfred and Margaret Bent started growing and selling roses in their front garden. By the early 1950s they had taken on acres of land from a local farmer and owned the village shop. “My mother used to run the shop,” said Ron, who started helping out in the family business at a young age. “You name it we sold it – paraffin, bread, Fennings little healers, tobacco. We lived behind the shop and, if a customer asked for a gallon of paraffin, often it was down to whoever was in at the time to go round the back to the shed to get it. I also used to sweep the front of shop out before I went to school. It gave me a good work ethic.”
Bents invests time in grow- ing quality, mature plants and send them over for sale when they are at their best and in colour
6 DIY WEEK 21 JULY 2017
This was a tradition that he carried on when he was at the helm of the business in the 1970s, along with his wife Wendy and brother John. “We did the same with our children,” he said. “Matthew, Rachel, Helen and Katherine all worked for pocket money from when they were young teens. It made them determined.” And the business now thrives under the management of the four siblings, who became involved in the running of the business in 2001, with Rachel in charge of the planning and executing of Bents’ award-winning Christmas displays, Helen, formerly head of catering and now marketing manager, and Katherine as strategic projects co-ordinator.
The first garden centre shop opened in 1966 and, although thoroughly modern at the time, was a far cry from the huge, state-of- the art centre Bents now occupies. Under Ron’s management, the business expanded, opening a new shop on the current site in 1988 and adding more space on to this in 1995. Managing director Matthew, who spent three years working as a buyer for Homebase, as well as a year working in garden centre businesses across America, has been tasked with using the invaluable experience gained outside of the family business, to develop and shape Bents’ future. In 2007 he was responsible for the creation of the highly innovative Open Skies Glasshouse, which boasts a roof that open when the sun shines but closes when it rains, and has spearheaded the major expansion plans since.
A growing investment
Bents still operates a successful nursery business on site, supplying 60% of the plants on sale in the garden centre. “It’s not a big, expensive nursery but it produces the goods,” said Ron, who added that the main focus is to produce quality plants – an objective that Bents is willing to invest time in. “The big benefit of having a
nursery is that we can grow our own sized plants. You’d never be able to buy some of these varieties in three and four-litre sized pots on the market because it’s about transport and how many you can get on a trolley. So they grow them in smaller pots and the plants tend to get smaller and younger, whereas on the nursery, we can grow our own mature and bigger plants.”
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